


Shadows over the Moon

by inverse_asterism



Series: over the Moon [1]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Slice of Life, Slow Build, big sis rae will eff you up, chapter 4 turned into a locked-room mystery, coffee shop au meets urban fantasy, i have no idea what to tag this, riffing on among us, sleep cute, some very light horror elements, supernatural meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 44,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse_asterism/pseuds/inverse_asterism
Summary: A drop of the moon fell from the sky...Sykkuno lives a relatively normal life, working in a coffee shop by day and stargazing in his off-time. Then one night he sees something fall from the sky and mysterious and scary things start to happen around him...
Relationships: Corpse Husband/Sykkuno (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: over the Moon [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140941
Comments: 189
Kudos: 704





	1. i

A drop of the moon fell from the sky.

He watched, dazzled, as it descended upon him. Until a sharp pain forced him to blink. It lasted only a moment, but he still staggered back a step and rubbed at his left eye with the heel of his hand nonetheless out of reflex. When he again turned his gaze skyward, the stars and the moon, full and appearing whole, were as they had been. A quick glance around also showed nothing amiss.

Perhaps he had imagined it.

“Hey.” Toast elbowed him in the ribs midway through his third yawn of the morning. “You better stop that before we open or you’ll drive away all our customers. Whoever heard of a coffee shop with sleepy staff?”

Sykkuno shook his head in a futile attempt to clear it and went back to wiping down tables. “Sorry, Rae can you make me an Americano?”

“I’ll make you a double shot espresso,” Rae laughed.

“Thanks,” he replied with a chuckle. But Toast was still staring at him. “Wh-What is it?”

“Are you wearing contacts?”

“Huh? No, my eyes… they aren’t that bad.”

“I know that. I meant like colour contacts.”

“Uh… no? Why?” He reflexively hunched his shoulders and pulled back as Toast leaned in to peer closely at his face. “Uh...?”

Toast went back to arranging menu cards with today’s specials on the tables Sykkuno had already wiped down. “What are you so tired for anyway?”

“Were you out stargazing again?” Rae keenly asked, setting the cup with his double espresso on the counter. 

Her tone made the question rhetorical but he answered anyway with a sheepish grin. “You got me.”

She reached across the counter to ruffle his hair affectionately. “You should know better, silly.”

“It’s seven, so I’m gonna open the door. Sykkuno, you man the espresso machine and stay out of sight until the caffeine kicks in. I mean it, you’ll be bad for business,” Toast pointed at him warningly.

Sykkuno and Rae exchanged good-natured eyerolls before she went to stand at the register and he took his coffee to the sideboard where he added sugar and cream. The morning sunlight reflected off the metal lid of the cream and made him blink. Something in his eye itched and he rubbed at it absently, which reminded him…

“Hey, Toast, what did you ask about my eyes for…?”

The question was lost in the shuffle of their first few customers trickling in to get coffee on the way to work. Sykkuno quickly sipped his coffee and let himself in behind the counter to fill orders. Toast was probably just commenting on how tired he looked anyway. He had only gotten two hours of sleep in the backseat of his car after all.

The morning rush lasted until around half-past nine, when they finally got some downtime. A few sit-in customers occupied seats here and there, mostly by the windows where the early spring sunshine could be enjoyed to its fullest.

“How are we doing for beans? The boss just texted to say he’ll stop in around noon.”

Rae squinted at the dispenser next to the espresso machine and then cast a glance skyward as she recalled what they had in the back. “Good for today, probably tomorrow, but some extra for the weekend would be appreciated.”

“Okay, I’ll let him know,” Toast began tapping out a reply, while also muttering to himself about what he needed for the weekend’s supply of pastries.

Rae glanced in Sykkuno’s direction just in time to catch him mid-yawn yet again. “Do you need another, Sykkuno?”

“If I drink any more coffee I’ll turn into a coffee bean myself, I think. Maybe I’ll run and get myself a Monster or something.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Toast came around the counter. “You should go now before the lunch crowd shows up.”

“Thanks. You guys need anything?” Sykkuno untied his apron and retrieved his bag from where it hung just inside the back room. After repeated assurances that they were fine and didn’t need anything, he left out the store entrance and headed for the 7-11 down the street.

As he soaked in the sunlight, Sykkuno was grateful that he got to work with such good friends. It had only been a few months now since their mutual friend Sean offered them jobs at his new coffee shop, the Comfy Couch. It had also been Sean’s idea for them to work under nicknames, hence ‘Sykkuno’, ‘Toast’, and ‘Valkyrae’ which had quickly been shortened to ‘Rae’ by everyone including regular customers. The nicknames were, as Sean put it, for protection from all the weirdos out there who creeped on baristas.

“Especially cuties like you, Sykkuno,” Sean had declared with an aggressive finger jab in his direction.

“What?!”

“Makes sense,” Toast agreed readily.

“Say no more,” Rae nodded.

“Wh-What do you mean?” Sykkuno fiddled with his bangs nervously. They were being silly. No one ever found him attractive.

They hadn’t ever given him a proper answer, but as it stood, he was almost more used to being called ‘Sykkuno’ than his own real name now. The coffee shop was a pretty good job too. He got to drink all the free coffee he wanted, and it gave him the freedom at night to play video games and go stargazing whenever the urge came over him.

Granted, he might have overdone it just a bit last night.

The 7-11 was only a short jog away. He pushed through the door and headed straight for the drinks. Already he was yawning again. If Monster didn’t help maybe he’d take a cat nap during his break later that afternoon.

As he turned down the drink aisle he brushed past the only other customer in sight; a taller man in a black hoodie wearing both a black surgical mask and a plain white gauze eye mask over his right eye. Sykkuno felt rather intimidated and hurried his pace a little. He grabbed a can of Monster, took it to the register, paid for it, and walked to the door, all with the distinct feeling that someone was watching him. A quick glance over his shoulder as he exited confirmed it was the black-clad other customer.

Should he have apologized when they brushed past each other? Was he angry? It was hard to tell with only one eye _barely_ visible under an unruly mass of curly black hair. Between that, the eyepatch, and the mask it was impossible to get any idea of what the other man’s face looked like.

Sykkuno winced in an attempt at a non-verbal apology and hurried back to the coffee shop.

The rest of the morning passed by without incident. Around noon, Sean bustled in like a whirlwind of energy, loudly greeting customers, handing off bags of coffee beans to Rae, Toast, and Sykkuno and then getting into a heated discussion with Toast about what the next seasonal menu should be. Rae and Sykkuno left them to sort it out and busied themselves with putting the supplies away and tending to a customer who wanted a refill.

Just as Sean left and they were acclimatizing to the deafening silence in his wake, the door opened and Sykkuno’s heart stopped. It was the black-clad man from the 7-11 approaching the counter.

“Hello,” Rae greeted him. “What can I get for you?”

He looked to the menu above her head, and his gaze slid ever so briefly in Sykkuno’s direction before it returned to her and he answered, “What’s like, the most basic coffee you have?”

If the man’s all-in-black faceless appearance wasn’t intimidating enough, his voice, a deep, rich rumble, completed the effect to startling degree. It was enough that Rae paused slightly before answering.

“An americano, I guess. It’s just hot water and espresso.”

Another glance in Sykkuno’s direction before speaking. “I’ll have that, then.”

It took until Rae had finished taking their mysterious and intimidating new customer’s order before she noticed Sykkuno standing stock still in the same spot he’d been in at the start.

“Sykkuno.”

“Uh, wha?”

“A regular hot americano for here, please?”

Sykkuno swallowed down his apprehension and avoided the other man’s gaze quickly. “Right, regular hot americano, on it.” His hands were shaking so much he almost spilled the coffee grounds, barely hearing as Rae took the man’s payment and directed him down to Sykkuno’s end of the counter for pick-up. From there he felt the other man’s gaze on him all through pulling the coffee, putting hot water into the mug, adding the shot of espresso, and setting the mug unsteadily on the counter. “H-Here you go. There’s… there’s sugar and cream o-over there if you… if you need it…” Absurd. Dude clearly drank his coffee black.

“Thanks.”

Sykkuno was unable to look the man in the face, but he noted the hand that emerged from the pocket of his hoodie to take the mug was pale, with chunky silver rings on three fingers and chipped black nail polish on just the ring and pinky fingers.

He took the coffee to the side and added a spoonful of sugar.

Oh.

The unexpectedness of it eased some of the tension and Sykkuno relaxed just a bit. He watched as the man took his coffee to one of the counter seats lining the wall. Surely he’d have to take his mask off to drink, right? Sykkuno wondered what he looked like.

Nope, nope, he decided against the counter and sat at one of the tables with his back to Sykkuno, Rae, and the three other customers in the shop for good measure. Oh well.

Rae came over to lean in and whisper, “You know that guy?”

Sykkuno shook his head. “N-No, I just… saw him at the 7-11 earlier.”

“Huh. He sure seemed interested in you.”

Around the time Mystery Guy finished his coffee and left, Toast came in from the back to say that one of the girls working the evening shift had called in sick. Both he and Rae had plans they couldn’t get out of that evening, so he was going to call Sean.

“I can cover it,” Sykkuno offered.

“Sykkuno, you look dead on your feet, you can’t work a double shift,” Rae protested.

“No, no, I’ll just… have another coffee and, and I’ll be fine. Thursday evenings are usually slow anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Toast exchanged a skeptical look with Rae.

“I-It’s no problem. You don’t have to bother Sean, he’s probably busy.”

“All right…” Rae agreed slowly. “If you say so.”

“Come in late tomorrow so you can get some sleep, okay?” Toast patted him on the shoulder.

“Sounds good to me.”

Rae left first around four, followed by Toast just past five. The evening shift was uneventful and thankfully free of any scary customers. The evening worker who did show up was new and still unsure of the closing procedures, so Sykkuno stayed to help out. When all was said and done, it was after ten when they locked the door and parted ways.

Sykkuno had been awake 16 hours, and been at work 15 of those on only two hours sleep. When you did the math he was bone tired. It was only a few blocks’ walk to his apartment from the shop, but already consciousness was beginning to slip away from him. He was so tired he didn’t notice the chill in the air deepening unseasonally until every breath swirled in white puffs around his face. He didn’t notice the street lights blinking out one after the other until he was walking in total darkness. 

And he didn’t notice some of the deeper shadows detach from the surrounding blackness to slither along behind him and bubble up from the ground until it was too late.

A tendril of inky blackness snapped out and wrapped itself around Sykkuno’s ankle, pulling him off his feet. His forehead bounced painfully off the pavement and bright spots of light exploded before his eyes. Before his vision could return, he was distantly aware of more _somethings_ wrapping around his arms, legs, and torso, and with an odd weightless feeling he was wrenched back upwards. His head lolled forward and to the side and it was so dark he couldn’t tell if his vision was back at first. But slowly he could see… he could see… darkness; darkness so dark it was blacker than the black of night around him. At best he could make out there were three or maybe four vaguely humanoid forms.

“ _You were wrong, this one’s human._ ”

“ _No, no, I sense something about him._ ”

“ _I feel it too. Let’s just eat him and find out._ ”

“Nng…” Sykkuno struggled to understand what was happening. His feet weren’t touching the ground but if he flexed his ankles the tips of his shoes brushed against it. He was suspended like a marionette. Monstrous voices were in his head and by the sounds of it his life was in danger. But that was absurd. Had he fallen asleep on the way home? This was a nightmare, right? It couldn’t be real.

One of the inky tendrils holding him slithered up and curled around his neck, squeezing just enough that he reflexively gulped for air. In that moment it dove into his open mouth and he gagged. More and more of it forced itself in, even as he thrashed about in a panic. He couldn’t even cry out and when the invasion finally ended, he hung limply in the grip of the rest of the blackness, able only to quiver in shock.

“What the--”

Before the question could even leave his lips, a violent retching took hold of him. A painful burning bubbled up in his throat and he vomited the blackness back out over the pavement in great, heaving waves that left him choking with tears streaming down his face. When it was finally over he was gasping for breath, coughing, and shaking all over. This was a nightmare, it had to be, and surely it couldn’t get any worse.

The puddle of ink he’d vomited up began to move, as if to spite him and prove that it _could_ actually get worse. It rippled slightly away from him and grew upwards, taking first the humanoid form the others all had, then with another optical illusion-like lightless shimmer, the features became more defined, details emerging until Sykkuno found himself face to face with…

himself.

“Wha…?”

The imposter Sykkuno smirked and reached out to grab him by the chin. “I see now what it was,” he said in a perfect copy of Sykkuno’s soft voice. “There’s something in him I couldn’t copy. Our boy here has a little bit of the moon in him…”

A little bit of the moon?

What did that mean?

The voices in his ears and the tight grips on his limbs began to slip away. His head pounded, the exhaustion, confusion, and pain from hitting it all threatened to claim him first. His… captors, he guessed…? They had said something about devouring him. If this wasn't a nightmare, then, he was going to die here. He only hoped… that someone… Rae or Toast or his family… would… look after his dog......

Suddenly the unnatural silence was broken by a whistling noise, like the wind prying through the window frame in a storm or the opening prelude to fireworks going off. Sykkuno's left arm dropped to his side as its bounds were cut free, and his whole body leaned heavily to that side. Next were the bounds on his legs, and his feet dragged lifelessly against the ground. He had the very distant awareness that he would fall at this rate but his legs refused to listen to reason.

Whistle, snap.

Sure enough, he was falling. It was all he could do to prepare himself mentally for the pain again.

But the pain never came.

Something, no, someone caught him with an arm circling around his back under his arms. There were noises and shouts and he was dragged around like a rag doll but trying to understand what was happening just made him want to throw up again.

Eventually he was set gently down on the ground, upon which the noises and shouting crescendoed then fell silent. It was only then that Sykkuno realized his inability to see was only partially due to his own head. The street lamps flickered on above him and beyond them the full moon, seeming unnaturally large, faded into view.

Backlit by all this was his saviour.

He stood over Sykkuno with his shoulders back and his head turned just so as to look down at him. In the hand opposite from Sykkuno he held a tall jet-black scythe like how the grim reaper was depicted as carrying. A toothy mask was fitted to the lower half of his face, reaching over his nose to just under where Sykkuno assumed was his right eye. Instead of a match to his left eye however, from where his right eye should have been visible came an unearthly purple glow, the light of which trailed upwards like smoke to reach through thick black curls towards the moon. The last thought Sykkuno had before finally slipping out of consciousness was that it kind of… almost… looked like a rabbit’s ear…

When Sykkuno next awoke, he was bundled up in his own bed with his dog curled up next to him. He could almost believe it actually had been a dream, except for the fact that when he sat up and wiped at his face there was a sharp pain that made him wince. A quick once-over and he began to take stock of his injuries.

There were angry red marks standing out on his wrists and from his calves down to his ankles. A quick lift of his shirt revealed similar ones around his rib cage in addition to some splotchy bruises just beginning to really take colour. This was also the same shirt he’d been wearing the previous day.

Bimbus looked up at him and gave a quizzical wag of his tail. Sykkuno floofed his head and grimaced. “How bad is the face situation?”

As if in response Bimbus dropped off the bed and scampered out of the room with a tik-tak flurry of his nails on the hardwood floor.

“That bad, huh?”

Sykkuno gingerly got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Sure enough he had what amounted to a half-black eye and a spectacular purple bruise that spread up from it to cover roughly a third of his forehead. The scrapes followed it down past his eye to feather across his cheekbone. He looked like a bad Todoroki cosplay.

Sykkuno’s shoulders slumped, which also hurt, so he slumped down even further and groaned. This left him with two problems:

1\. If it hadn’t been a nightmare, what exactly had happened and who had saved him?

(okay maybe that was two questions in itself) and 

2\. How was he going to explain this to Rae and Toast?


	2. ii

“SYKKUNO?!” Rae’s voice filled the coffee shop when he finally mustered the courage up to go to work. She dashed around the counter and across the room to first take his face in her hands, then grasp his shoulders and demand, “What the hell happened to you?! Look at your face!”

Sykkuno winced. “Ow, Rae…”

“Oh, sorry.” She let go and hurried him ahead of her towards the back, where Toast was frowning, a worried crease between his eyebrows as he took in the state of Sykkuno’s face and the red marks on his wrists that his sweater didn’t quite cover. He followed Rae’s still unanswered question with the more pointed, 

“Did you go to a doctor?”

Sykkuno fiddled with his bangs, half out of nervous habit, half in a vain attempt to hide the extent of his wounds. “No, it’s just a few scrapes and bruises…”

“Just a few--” Rae sputtered, her tone growing more shrill as the initial shock wore off and left her with only the worry and the need to be angry at someone for doing this to her friend.

“Yeah, I uh… I fell, you see, last night on the way home. You know, I was so tired,” he weakly tried to laugh it off. “I was so tired you guys, that I fell, and…”

Toast raised a skeptical eyebrow and crossed his arms. “Sykkuno,” he stopped him, “you really expect us to believe that you fell and came up looking like that?”

Sykkuno shrank back a little, his voice also growing smaller. “Well, yeah… I mean, it’s true…” It _was_ true, technically, he’d just left out the direct cause of the fall. Not that he could have given a satisfactory explanation if he’d tried. What he had managed to remember over the course of getting ready for work had only served to both confuse and nauseate him.

“You weren’t mugged or anything, were you?” Rae demanded, still brimming with directionless fury on his behalf.

Sykkuno quickly shook his head. “No, nothing like that happened.”

“Show me your wallet.”

He produced it for her inspection, still with his driver’s license, credit card, and other miscellany intact. She almost smacked it against his palm to give it back but thought better of it last minute, handing it to him gently and lifting up his sleeve to get a better look at his wrist. Rae sighed. “Sykkuno, if you’re in any trouble…”

“I’m n--” he broke off, unsure if it was a false promise. He didn’t want to outright lie to his friends. “Rae, you know you and Toast would be the first people I talked to.”

This seemed to mollify her slightly. Rae went back to the register and left him with the harder person to convince. ‘Detective’ Toast was still eyeing him suspiciously.

“You really don’t want to talk about it?”

Sykkuno shook his head. He made sure to look as apologetic as possible.

Toast sighed. “All right, grab your apron and get to work. I’m sending you home as soon as Poki gets here for her shift, though.”

Once his shift was over, Sykkuno was all but forced out of the coffee shop, with Toast, Rae, and Poki all fussing over him. He managed to talk them out of sending someone to walk him home with the promise that he would buy some painkillers and ointment for his face and arms (and the rest of him, but Sykkuno had smartly omitted telling his friends the extent of what his clothes covered) on the way home and take it easy. Yes, and some good take out. Sure, ice cream sounded like a good idea too. No, he would not use this as an opportunity to stay up all night gaming. Yes, he would give Bimbus pets. Yes, he would text in the morning if he felt like he needed another day to recuperate. Yes, he was sure he was fine. No, guys, he didn’t need someone to walk him home. Really. He was fine.

Sykkuno stopped in at a drug store for the medicines and also cut through the pet aisle for some doggie treats. As he waited in line to pay, he caught a glimpse of himself in the darkened storefront window and frowned. He really did look terrible, but otherwise he thought he felt okay, just sore. He’d make sure to buy breakfast sandwiches or something for Toast and Rae on the way to work tomorrow to apologize. There was really no need to have--

One of the shadows outside the window seemed to shift unnaturally and the medicine boxes and bag of doggie treats slipped from his hands to clatter at his feet. At the same time, a car passed by and in the glow of the headlights he could see it was just someone carrying an oddly shaped package. Even so, it took him a moment to quell the panic that seized his chest and made his lungs shudder.

Sykkuno quickly picked up his stuff, paid, and exited the drug store. He was suddenly very, very desperate to be home and away from the rest of the world. The darker it got the more the sickly fear from the previous night crawled up his spine and robbed him of body heat. He was shivering by the time he stopped in at his usual take-out place. With some luck the familiarity would ease some of the apprehension and give him some reprieve before the longer walk home.

Sure enough, the familiar sight of Ludwig standing behind the counter brought a smile to his face. “Hey, Ludwig.”

“Hey, Sykkuno, geez, you look like shit. You lose a fight with a flight of stairs or something?”

“Uhh… something like that. What’s the special today?”

“Italian tacos.”

“Italian… tacos?”

Peter’s head poked in from the kitchen and corrected him, “Tortilla pizzas. Stop telling people that. Hey, Sykkuno. Wow, you look like crap.”

“Hi Peter, and uh, y-yeah, I know…” This was going to be a recurring conversation for a while, wasn’t it?

“Well, you could eat them like a pizza,” Ludwig was in the midst of laying out his logic, “but if you fold them in half, see, they’re portable, handy, _and_ you get to call them Italian tacos.”

Sykkuno thought that almost made sense and yet kind of didn’t. He wasn’t sure. “Uh, tortilla pizzas sound fine. I’ll take two.”

“Four cheese, pepperoni, or margherita? I kept trying to convince him we should have a Mexican option to really mess with people but he shot me down.”

“I didn’t shoot you down. We don’t have any jalapenos,” Peter protested.

“Sure,” Ludwig dismissed this excuse. He noted Sykkuno's order of the cheese and pepperoni pizzas on the notepad before him and relayed it to Peter. “Anything else? We have potato salad, mac n’ cheese, some Korean noodle thing, oh and cream of mushroom soup.”

None of those options sounded like they went very well with pizza. “Do you have any ice cream?”

“Tacos and ice cream? Are you going through a break up?”

“Call them pizzas, dammit,” Peter called, fully aware he would be ignored again.

“Going through a-- what? Y-You know I don’t have anyone to break up with…” Sykkuno assured him in a flustered haste. “I just…” he pointed to his face with the hand that had come up to cover his laugh to illustrate, “wanted some comfort food.”

“No one to break up with?!” Ludwig stepped back in mock umbrage. “Sykkuno is… is that all I am to you? Just a fling? I thought we were serious! I was thinking of proposing and everything!”

Sykkuno sputtered. “What?! P-Propo… Ludwig, you’re crazy.”

Ludwig shot him finger guns. “Crazy for you maybe. Loving the colour contacts, by the way.”

“Hm? I’m not…”

Peter came out with the tortilla pizzas and a little pint of vanilla ice cream. He handed them to Sykkuno and folded his elbows on the counter. “The ice cream is left over from last week’s dessert special, it’s on the house. Seriously though, Sykkuno, what happened? Are you okay?”

“A-Are you sure?” Sykkuno looked appreciatively at the ice cream gift. “Thanks, Peter. And I’m… I’m fine, really. I just need to go home and, and rest. That’s all. This’ll all heal in no time.”

“Okay, well, you take care, all right?”

“I will, thanks.”

“Bye, Sykkuno!” Ludwig waved him out.

Sykkuno hurried home as quickly as he could. The night was closing in and his pizzas were cooling and he just really wanted to curl up in bed with his dog and watch Youtube videos. He had just rounded the last corner when he stopped short and nearly dropped his stuff again.

Standing with his back against the wall of Sykkuno’s building was the black hoodie-and-mask man from the previous day. Most likely alerted by the sound of Sykkuno’s rustling packages and his soft ‘eh’s while making sure he kept hold of them, the man glanced over and stood straight. For a moment they both hovered as if unsure how to proceed.

Sykkuno decided his best option was to play it normal. “Um, hi. We uh, met yesterday…” _in the street, when you stood like a god of death over me under the full moon..._ “at, at the uh, at the coffee shop. Did you just move to this neighbourhood?”

“Something like that,” the other man looked him over. “Sorry... about...”

“It’s fine.” Sykkuno cut him off quickly. “It’s… It’s fine.” He didn't want to talk about it. It was scary enough the first time. “Thank you, um… Mr…?”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

“Huh?”

The other man huffed, and met Sykkuno’s gaze with a look of dangerous intent in his visible eye. “I missed one yesterday.”

“You…” Sykkuno’s mouth went dry as he struggled to comprehend what exactly this meant, while at the same time understanding it meant nothing at all good. “You missed… uh…” Did he mean…? He didn’t… He couldn’t possibly mean…?

Sykkuno went very, very still as the streetlights overhead abruptly went out, and the stark lack of any lit windows became apparent at the same time. They were plunged into a darkness so absolute that Sykkuno was reminded of the times when he went out of the city to stargaze… It was just like that moment when he turned off the car’s interior light and had to wait until his eyes adjusted to the muted light of the stars and the moon and…

A faint purple glow broke into his thoughts, and Mr. whoever-he-was stepped closer. His surgical mask was once again replaced by the fitted one with the glowy purple eye. Sykkuno took a step back. The sound of his take out and drug store bags rustling violently as he began to shake all over sounded abnormally loud in his ears. “I don’t- I- I uh… p-please…”

The scary man grabbed Sykkuno by the arm and yanked him closer, making him stumble slightly but ultimately end up around his back. “Huh?”

“Stay behind me.”

Sykkuno noticed the giant scythe, easily seven or eight feet tall, was in his other hand out of seemingly nowhere and gulped. Probably best to listen. The wait to see what was going to happen next seemed interminable. Sykkuno stayed close to his protector. The purple glow could be seen faintly from the back, once again curling upwards like smoke in lazy waves. The longer Sykkuno stared at it the more it felt strangely familiar. Then his head throbbed and he was forced to squeeze both eyes shut and shake his head. He swayed off-balance and took two steps sideways.

“I said stay--”

A low chuckle emerged out of the dark, one that sounded at once familiar and foreign to Sykkuno’s ears. It was his voice, but not in any way he’d ever used it. So that meant the ‘one’ that his protector had missed yesterday was…

Imposter Sykkuno melted into view with a leering grin. It was an odd experience to see such an alien expression on his own face. Imposter Sykkuno’s dark eyes were rimmed in red behind where his hair hung heavy over his face. The darkness seemed to cling to him, amplifying his cheekbones and making the white teeth of his unhidden smile stand out against the dark unnaturally bright.

The darkness around them shifted, coming alive with several figures, some formless and blackest black, some with vaguely human features, all of them threatening.

Sykkuno’s protector tightened his grip on the scythe and took a deep, steadying breath. He didn’t know _why_ this scary man was protecting him, but he was grateful for it all the same. He moved closer and gripped the back of his hoodie lightly.

“You know as well as I do,” Imposter Sykkuno said, his voice low and threatening in a way the real Sykkuno could never imagine, “if that human has a bit of the moon in him, there’s no way we can resist.” He chuckled. “If you were at your full power, you never would have let me get away, and now, my friends and I have you outnumbered.”

What did that mean, having the moon in him?

Imposter Sykkuno lifted his chin. He narrowed his eyes in a display of arrogant self-satisfaction. “Devour them both, but I get first taste of the human.”

The dark all moved at once, and Sykkuno’s protector dropped into a defensive stance with his scythe held horizontally before him and his other hand held out and back to block Sykkuno from attack. From there everything was blur, with too many variations on black-on-blackness and too much motion to really see anything clearly. All manner of whooshes and roars and unearthly howls filled his ears. It was all he could do to clumsily follow along with his protector’s movements, clinging desperately to his back.

Eventually it became too much, and he stumbled, his pizza and drug store bags going flying one direction while he hit the ground hard on his side in the other. Sykkuno scrambled to get back up, but something hit him heavily in the small of his back and pinned him down. He shouted and flailed about, trying to knock whatever had him off. Already battered from the previous night, his body exploded in pain but adrenaline kicked in and pushed him through it. “No, no! _No!_ ”

The blade of his protector’s scythe cut through the air before his face and dissipated the shadows that had piled on top of Sykkuno. The protector gave him a hand up, but in the process made the mistake of leaving his back open.

Sykkuno’s protector gave a strangled ‘hrk’ and shuddered against him. Sykkuno hurriedly gripped him by the upper arms to steady him. His breath stopped in his throat as the finer details of what happened became apparent; over his protector’s shoulder, he was looking into a mirror image of his own face. 

Imposter Sykkuno stared him down, his lips spreading into a sickening grin as he pushed the blade of the heavy hunting knife in his hand further into the protector’s back. With a small laugh, he made certain the weight of his pressure had been conveyed properly to the real Sykkuno before wrenching the knife back out and punctuating the attack with an additional slash across the back of the protector’s shoulder blades. His knees buckled and Sykkuno struggled to keep him upright, eventually sinking down to the ground together with him. The situation seemed hopeless.

Sykkuno was shaking and light headed, still unable to breathe properly. He took short, stuttering breaths in little gasps. “Wait, wait, no…” His panic was all-encompassing. “No no no…” His protector’s scythe clattered to the ground and he sagged against Sykkuno. His shoulders were heaving, and Sykkuno could see his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat when he pulled back to look him in the face. “No, no no no…”

“You…” the protector put a hand on his shoulder and weakly pushed him back, “should run…”

“Wh-What?!”

“Run…”

“B-But…”

“Go. Now.”

“But what about…?”

His protector got to his feet, and was immediately swarmed with shadows. They dragged them apart before the protector could again insist he go and Sykkuno could again attempt to protest. The shadows piled on under the leering watch of Imposter Sykkuno, so much that he couldn’t even see the purple glow anymore. It was hopeless. There were just too many...

No.

No, this was…

This couldn’t…

Sykkuno’s body moved before his mind could come to a decision. He got inelegantly to his feet and stumbled, his fingers brushing against the fallen scythe as he steadied himself and he took the opportunity to grab it. It was lighter than he expected, but still had some heft, and the length of it nearly threw him off his feet but he somehow, miraculously, was able to take a few running steps.

Adrenaline did a lot. Desperation did a lot.

But there was something else, a light that took hold of him and cut through the dark and the shadows seemingly independent of his actions. Because he was focused on one enemy and one enemy alone.

Sykkuno swung the scythe as best he could, and in his unskilled hands it hit Imposter Sykkuno with the staff instead of the blade. That was enough to knock him off his feet, though, and the momentum drove the tip of the staff into the pavement where Sykkuno fumbled over and around it. He was all shaky legs and sweaty palms, but he managed to wrench it free and take a wild swing at the pile of shadows. A few scattered, and he swung again with a grunt.

His head throbbed. Nothing made sense at all, he didn’t understand what was going on. What did they mean about the moon? Why were these shadow things attacking him? Why had one of them stolen his face? Why had this mysterious and scary man protected him?

But he did know one thing.

Now it was his turn to protect the mysterious and scary man.

The darkness faded, resurged to almost reclaim them, and then was gone. The mass of shadows piling on the protector dispersed with a hiss and a groan, leaving him to stare, dazed, up at Sykkuno framed by the full moon in the sky above them.

Sykkuno returned his gaze, his shoulders rising and falling heavily with each breath. His hair was mussed and his face dirty and battered. He was holding the scythe awkwardly with the blade set against the ground so it curved up behind him dangerously.

He looked gorgeous.

The protector summoned the last of his strength and snapped to his feet, wrapping Sykkuno in one arm while he reclaimed the scythe with the other. He deftly turned it around and swung wide, slicing Imposter Sykkuno in half before he could go through with his last-ditch sneak attack.

Imposter Sykkuno’s reaction was an understated sneer and a ‘tch’ before he there was what could only be described as a flash of inky darkness and he was gone. Immediately the street lamps and lit windows around them blinked back into sight and the world was as if nothing had happened at all.

Left alone in the street, Sykkuno and his protector took a moment to catch their breaths.

The protector disappeared his scythe in a wisp of smoke and took Sykkuno’s face in his hands, pressing their foreheads together. “You…” he whispered, voice gravelly and strained, “Thank you…”

Sykkuno nodded slightly, making sure to maintain the skin contact as much as he could. He lifted one hand to wrap around the wrist of his saviour. It took time before he could find his voice, eventually shakily settling on, “Do… Do you want to come upstairs? I-I bought ointment and stuff so I can… t-tend to your wounds…” It was the least he could do.

“Sure…”

Sykkuno retrieved the drug store bag and now stone-cold tortilla pizzas. Together the pair of them aided each other into the apartment building and took the elevator up to Sykkuno’s apartment. Bimbus greeted them with heartwarming enthusiasm.

“I uh… I like your dog,” Sykkuno’s protector-turned-guest offered quietly.

Oh, well, that settled it. Anyone who liked Bimbus and was liked by Bimbus had to be a good person.

Sykkuno pulled out a kitchen chair and shifted some of the random gaming and stargazing and bill-related detris that had accumulated on it to the table. He helped the other man sit down and began fumbling with the drug store bag. At his feet, Bimbus perked up and he took a moment to admonish him, “No, Bimb, you can have treats later, okay?”

When Sykkuno turned back to his guest, he noted the fitted mask had disappeared to be replaced again by the surgical mask and the eyepatch but didn’t comment. Instead there was a more important question to ask.

“Um, c-can I… can I ask your name…? If… If uh…”

His guest’s visible eye softened and his shoulders relaxed. “It’s Corpse.”

“Oh.” Sykkuno dropped his gaze to the ointment in his hands. “I guess that goes with the whole uh, look, I guess, you know, all the black and, and carrying a scythe and everything…”

Corpse chuckled. “Kinda, yeah.”

That chuckle and the softness hidden behind his deep voice did something to Sykkuno’s heart he didn’t quite have the words for. So instead he settled for, “I-I’m… My friends call me Sykkuno.”

Corpse nodded. “I heard at the coffee shop.”

“Ah, right. Um…” He fiddled more with the ointment. “C-Can you lift your… your shirt?” Sykkuno asked, “Oh, oh wait… you were cut, do I have some bandages or… or something… maybe…”

“Don’t worry,” Corpse grunted and pulled his shirt over his head. “It should already be healing…” He pondered how to explain and settled on, “The… The damage accumulates but eventually heals over time, kind of, it’s hard to explain…”

Sure enough, the bleeding had stopped but the wounds still stood out an angry red against his skin. Sykkuno tried not to stare too much, because that would be awkward. He went down on his knees next to the chair and began to apply ointment. The other man’s skin was warm to the touch. The lines of his lean musculature flowed smoothly up from his back into his broad shoulders and down over his biceps. It was actually very hard not to stare, so much that he jumped a little when Corpse spoke again.

“You…”

The word hung in the air so long that Sykkuno prompted, “Um, yes?”

Corpse appeared to rethink what he was about to say and opted instead for, “...Thank you.”

Sykkuno blushed and hoped to hide it by focusing on applying more ointment. “I should be thanking you. I-I don’t know why you did it but… but you, you saved me…”

Corpse turned around to face him, putting his hand over Sykkuno’s. He took the ointment from him to place on the table and then reached back to gently run his thumb over Sykkuno’s cheek under his left eye. “I had a good reason…”

Sykkuno’s heart was beating double time. “Um…?”

Corpse exhaled slowly and pulled his hand away to lift both the eyepatch and his bangs off his right eye…

His right eye that wasn’t there.

Where his eye should have been was just an indeterminate purple glow. In the well-lit apartment it was more faint than out in the darkness, but it was definitely present.

Without really thinking, Sykkuno reached up, his fingertips ghosting across Corpse’s cheekbone underneath the missing eye. “What happened?”

Corpse wrapped his fingers in his own while he explained, “In my truest form, I am a part of the moonlight, scattered and without shape. Kind of… like the opposite of the shadows. Or, maybe more accurately, fundamentally opposite of the shadows, but that’s not… that’s not important right now...”

“Okay…?” Sykkuno patiently waited for him to go on.

“The other night… you were out stargazing… and… part of the moon’s and… my… essence, I guess you could say, part of my… power… was drawn- uh, fell towards you...”

Sykkuno thought back and remembered seeing something fall from the sky… and the pain in his…

Realization bloomed within him.

“Your eye… is…?”

Corpse nodded. Still with his hand around Sykkuno’s, he gently brushed the other man’s cheek under his left eye with the backs of his fingers to illustrate, “It’s in you.”

“H-How… How do I give it back?”

A pained but soft look crossed what little of Corpse’s features could be seen over the surgical mask. He used his free hand to put the eyepatch back in place and shook his head. “You didn’t realize it, downstairs, but, well…” He took a breath. “You fought back. You used my weapon and drove off the darkness.” Another deep breath. “And… now that you’ve used some of its power as your own it can’t be removed without… uh, without...” There was no easy way to say it. “I’d have to kill you to take it back.”

“Oh…”

Corpse saw the fear on his face and fumbled over his words. “Er, well, th-there might be another way…”

“Oh…” Sykkuno said again weakly. He wasn’t sure how reassured he should feel. “I hope so…”

Corpse suddenly sounded as though he desperately _wanted_ him to feel reassured, “Or… Or I could just wait, you know, until… you…”

Until? _Oh_... Wow, that was… Sykkuno wet his lips nervously. “By wait, do… do you mean…?”

“Other people might come to steal it from you, other… not so nice people…”

“R-Right…”

“So… I’ll have to stick around to protect you... it... you and it…”

Sykkuno offered him a small smile. “I’ll definitely feel safer that way.” They’d only just met but somehow, he meant it honestly.

They stayed that way for a moment, Corpse sitting in the chair with his hands curled protectively around Sykkuno’s, Sykkuno kneeling on the floor before him, Bimbus flopped down between them waiting patiently for treats. It occurred to Sykkuno that he had to say something to ease the atmosphere.

“I’ll uh… you can… I guess the least I can do is give you free coffee whenever you want?” he joked lightly.

Corpse’s visible eye crinkled like he was smiling. He helped Sykkuno to his feet and admitted, “I don’t actually like coffee. I only ordered it because you were there.”

“Oh... Well, we have other drinks like um, hot chocolate and… and herbal tea and juice and stuff?”

“Herbal tea sounds nice.”

“Next time you come in I’ll make you a nice cup of herbal tea, Corpse.”

It was hard to tell with the mask but Corpse just might have blushed a little. “I’d... I’d like that, Sykkuno.”


	3. iii

It was a slow Tuesday afternoon when Corpse ventured into the coffee shop again. With no customers around Sykkuno, Rae, and Toast were sitting in a triangle tossing popcorn into each other’s mouths and chatting. They all looked up as the bell above the door jangled, and he cursed it because it would have been nice to watch them a little longer.

“Hi, Corpse!” Sykkuno greeted him sunnily. “Want some popcorn?”

“Yeah, yeah I’ll have some popcorn.” Corpse closed the distance between them to take a couple. He was keenly aware of Rae and Toast’s eyes on him as he did so.

“Guys, this is my new friend Corpse,” Sykkuno introduced them. “Corpse, this is Rae and Toast.”

“Hi,” Corpse greeted them apprehensively.

Rae and Toast had identical and equally unreadable raised-eyebrow expressions on their faces.

“Hi…” Toast said slowly.

“Corpse, huh?” Rae asked.

“Yeah, he’s so dark and mysterious looking, it suits him, right?” Sykkuno got to his feet and held out the popcorn bowl. “Do you want some herbal tea? We have chamomile and rosehip and yuzu. You can have my chair.”

Corpse took the bowl and the chair and quietly answered, “Sure, chamomile is good…”

Sykkuno hurried to the counter. “Remember it’s on me.”

“Yeah, yeah… just this one time, okay?”

Sykkuno pretended he didn’t hear that.

Corpse leaned back and noticed Rae and Toast were still watching him, or rather, judging him. Would he be worthy of Sykkuno’s friendship in their eyes?

“So…” Toast drawled. “How did you two meet?”

“Uh… stargazing.” It wasn’t _exactly_ a lie, not really…

“You didn’t seem so friendly the last time you were in here?” Rae crossed her arms and stared him down expectantly.

Shit. “It was really dark then so he didn’t recognize me at first when I came in.”

“Oh,” Rae relaxed and resumed eating popcorn. “That makes sense.”

“Yeah, that sounds like our Sykkuno,” Toast agreed, maybe too readily.

“What do you mean?” Sykkuno protested, having come back just in time to hear.

He was saved from more teasing when the door jangled open and Sean burst in. “Oi! What’re you lazy bums doing layin’ about? That’s not what I’m paying you for!”

“Popcorn?” Toast offered his bowl.

“Ooh, don’t mind if I do.” Sean took a handful and only then noticed Corpse. “Who’s this?”

“Sykkuno’s new friend, Corpse.”

“Sykkuno’s new boyfriend?!” Sean’s volume notched up. “We’ll see about that! Papa Sean will accept nothing but the best for my Sykkunie. Have you two vetted him yet? Is he worthy of our beautiful boy?”

“Wait, wha?” Corpse struggled to keep up with the logic leap Sean took.

Sykkuno raised his voice in frantic protest. “Wh-What? No, he’s not- you’re- we’re just friends! What are you talking about?! Why would you even--”

“I’m just messing with you,” Sean cheerfully stuck out his hand. “I’m Sean. Nice to meet you, Corpse.”

Corpse cautiously accepted the handshake. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“Wow, that’s probably the best voice I’ve ever heard.”

“Uh… thanks?”

“So anyway, I know you guys are like, super busy right now,” he swept his arm around at the empty shop, “but I thought we should have a meeting to finally decide on the next seasonal menu. Corpse, any friend of Sykkuno’s is a friend of mine, so feel free to sit in.”

Hurricane Sean had Corpse caught entirely off-guard. His only option was to shakily agree and sip his tea. He listened as the other four discussed options and threw out ideas, while also taking the time to observe his friends. Toast was calm and spoke with measured confidence, like a kind older brother. Rae was animated and intelligent, with a laugh that came easily and lit up the room. Sykkuno was just happy to be there, supporting the other’s ideas and making sure to credit their input when it led to ideas of his own. Sean was boisterous and riffed on what the other three said a lot, but he clearly valued their opinions. 

Over the course of the discussion, it came up that Sean knew someone nearby who ran a strawberry farm willing to give them a good deal, so they went with strawberry danishes and cheesecakes for the sweet side of the menu. With that decided, Sean brought up the address of the farm on his smartphone and turned it around for them to see.

“I know that place,” Sykkuno told them. “It’s not far from one of my stargazing spots.”

“Oh, cool. Can we count on you to go pick up an order?”

“Sure.”

“Take Corpse with you, he looks like he could use some country air,” Sean suggested.

Corpse didn’t know what he could possibly mean by that. If anything he was surprised they remembered he was there at all.

Sykkuno furrowed his brow. He exchanged a glance with Corpse. “I mean, sure… if he wants?”

“I could go with you.”

“Might as well go today,” Rae leaned back in her chair and gestured outside. “Not like there’s much else to do.”

"Even so, we really need to stop deciding these menus so last minute," Toast griped. No one paid him or the remaining question of chicken sandwiches or chicken wraps any attention.

Suddenly the idea of going for a drive with Corpse made Sykkuno oddly nervous. They were friends now, sure, he guessed. They were sharing-an-eye friends, but were they going-for-a-drive-outside-the-city friends? Was it weird to be thinking about things like that? It was weird to be thinking about things like that, wasn’t it. “Y-Yeah, we could… we could go today. How do you feel about a… a, uh, little road trip, Corpse?”

Corpse studied his chamomile tea. “I don’t have any other plans…”

“Great, I’ll call my friend.” Sean stood up and began dialling. He turned back just before the person on the other end picked up, to add, “By the way, I’ve been meaning to say the colour contacts are a good look on you, Sykkuno.”

Sykkuno looked confused. “But I’m not…” He stopped when Corpse knocked the side of his boot against his shoe and it dawned on him. “Oh, oh, uh, yeah… th-thanks…?”

Not long later, Sykkuno and Corpse made the short walk to Sykkuno’s apartment to retrieve his car from the parking lot. Corpse noticed Sykkuno rubbing absently at his eye and huffed out a quiet breath. “The colour might change now and again while your body gets used to it.”

“That explains a lot,” Sykkuno mumbled, fixing imaginary flyaways in his bangs. “Wish I knew how to give it back without… without, you know…”

“Yeah.” Corpse said softly, “We’ll figure something out.” Maybe. Hopefully. Maybe hopefully.

Between traffic and distance, the drive out to the strawberry farm took about an hour and a half. At first Sykkuno was nervous he might come across as rude while he focused on navigating traffic on the freeway. But Corpse sat next to him in comfortable silence, watching the outside world pass by with one elbow on the window and his legs stretched languidly out before him.

For not the first time, Sykkuno tried to sort out his thoughts on the whole sharing-an-eye friends situation. Corpse hadn’t exactly given him all the details, which was fine; Sykkuno didn’t want to pry. Plus he’d spent much of the time immediately following their first meeting recovering physically and mentally from… all of it. 

Basically, as he understood it, Corpse was some kind of moon spirit. So did that make him not human? He seemed pretty human to him, you know, except for the glowing purple void where his right eye should have been. Oh, and the wielding a scythe part but humans could wield scythes if they wanted to, right? Although he _had_ also made it disappear. Regular humans probably couldn’t do that part. So Corpse was a moon spirit and his eye had fallen out of the sky to land in Sykkuno’s eye. Wait, where did Sykkuno’s real eye go, then? That was a question he’d have to ask later. Back to sorting out what he _did_ know: Corpse the moon spirit’s eye fell out of the sky and landed in Sykkuno’s eye and now evil face-stealing shadow people wanted to eat him and also he might have magic powers. Did he get all that right? It seemed like a lot and yet didn’t really explain anything at all, he felt.

They reached the strawberry farm and met the owner, who provided them with two flats of vibrant red ripe strawberries for the shop, plus a little basket for them to share between them on the drive for free. Sykkuno paid on Sean’s behalf while Corpse stowed the flats away in the trunk of the car and then they were on their way back.

“There was a little, uh, like a sightseeing spot off the road up ahead I’ve been meaning to check out,” Sykkuno asked hesitantly. “It, it looks like it might be a good place for stargazing… if you, if you don’t mind…?”

“I don’t mind at all,” Corpse said, as if wanting to check out a new stargazing spot was the most natural thing in the world.

“Okay, cool.”

The sightseeing spot was a little overhang jutting out from one of the curves in the road, with enough space for maybe three or four vehicles to park comfortably out of the way of traffic and a wood deck looking out at the countryside. Sykkuno and Corpse stood side by side at the rail of the deck, looking out at the trees and eating strawberries. There was what looked like one street light back at the parking area, but out here on the deck it might be dark enough to get a good view of the sky at night. It was worth coming back to check out, Sykkuno thought. He could bring a blanket and a thermos of coffee in case it got cold and just observe. Maybe Corpse would want to come with him. In that case, not coffee, some tea instead was a better idea. Although, if Corpse was part of the moon maybe that meant he wasn’t all that interested in looking at the sky. Hm...

His train of thought was interrupted when he noticed Corpse looking at him, an amused grin showing on the little strip of his face between where he’d pulled the mask down to just below his mouth and the eyepatch/hair that covered much of his face down to the bridge of his nose.

“What’s so funny?”

“You have strawberry juice on your face.”

“Huh?” He swiped at his mouth, embarrassed. “Really? Where?”

“Here,” Corpse reached over to thumb the offending bit of red from the corner of Sykkuno’s bottom lip. The gesture was oddly electric in a muted sort of way, especially when his touch lingered. Sykkuno stared up at him and unconsciously pressed his strawberry-tinged lips together. Even though the sun was low in the horizon and it was still early in the year it suddenly felt very warm.

Corpse’s lips, also pink from the strawberries, parted slightly and he breathed Sykkuno’s name. But before he could go on with… whatever he was about to say or do, he wasn’t exactly sure, the trees beyond the wood deck suddenly rustled and began to sway as though something was approaching through them.

Sykkuno watched curiously. Corpse watched apprehensively.

“I feel something…” a low, crackly voice like leaves crunching underfoot preceded whoever was approaching, “I can feel… power…”

Two of the trees closest to them swayed violently and a figure appeared between them, clinging to the branches of the one directly before Corpse. It looked to be an old woman, with deep hollows in her cheeks and under her eyes that gave her a skeletal appearance. A long robe that looked like an ever-shifting blanket of fallen leaves hung off her bony limbs. Her appearance brought with it the strong smell of compost and a hint of smoke. Her bright eyes looked between Corpse and Sykkuno and back again.

She laughed out a sickly sounding hissing noise. “I know what you are. What are you up to, coming all the way down here?”

“Nothing,” Corpse said, his voice dropping in register. “We were just leaving. Let’s go, Sykkuno.”

“Wait.” Her eyes were fixed on Sykkuno now. She squinted and then gave another wheezy laugh. “That boy, I see he has a bit of the moon in him. What did you do?” She launched herself off the tree to latch onto the deck railing with agility that contrasted sharply against her aged appearance. Her long nails dug into the wood, which began to crack and rot away at her touch. “Not that I care, but a human with a bit of the moon in him… he would feed my children very well…”

The rotting of the deck spread impossibly fast. Corpse grabbed Sykkuno by the arm and turned to run but it was already too late. The deck collapsed under their feet and sent them both tumbling down the steep slope into the gorge below.

Thankfully it wasn’t too deep, but still deep enough that both Sykkuno and Corpse had the wind knocked out of them when they landed. Sykkuno groaned. His multitude of bruises had _just_ started to heal…

“Who or… what was that lady?” He asked, looking up at the remnants of the wood deck’s support structure. “She’s crazy!”

Corpse pushed some wood fragments off himself and stood up. Sykkuno noticed he’d put his intimidating ‘game face’ on, which spoke to how serious their situation was. “That was a blight, a malevolent spirit not unlike the shadows that attacked you before. Where the shadows spread fear, the blight spreads rot. We have to find a way back up to the car before her children find us.”

Sykkuno looked to the right and left and around. “There’s probably a trail somewhere for hikers.” The incline seemed to taper off more so to the right and he pointed, “Maybe that way?”

“Let’s go. I don’t really like being out in the open like this…” Corpse began walking.

Corpse’s tone had been even, but already Sykkuno was recognizing that he didn’t say things lightly. He hurried to catch up and hoped dearly that this was the right direction. Sykkuno had never in his life imagined the rustling of wind through the leaves would sound _threatening_ but here they were. Unfortunately the direction they were heading in was also where the tree line approached the side of the gorge to almost run right along it, and the rustling sounded like it had more purpose now.

“They’re coming,” Corpse said.

At the same time, Sykkuno pointed ahead. “Look, a trail.”

Corpse smacked him between the shoulder blades. “Run. I’ll follow.”

Sykkuno took off running for the trail. It looked pretty steep and he’d only worn old converse sneakers that day; he hoped he could climb it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw shapes, formless piles of rotted leaves with gleaming eyes showing through the gaps and boney hands, shuffling out of the trees. He counted around ten of them before putting his head down and doing his best to put on more speed.

The whistle-swoosh sound he now knew as Corpse’s scythe cutting through the air reached his ears. He didn’t like this. Corpse was outnumbered and there was nothing he could do to help. Hopefully if they made it up to the car the blights would give up on the whole-- “Urk.”

Two of the little blight ‘children’ burst from the trees and grabbed Sykkuno by the arms, dragging him down to pin him against the ground. He thrashed about to try and get away, but two more came shuffling out to grab his ankles. They were followed by the matron herself, who licked her lips and flexed her fingers over him.

Sykkuno shook his head and struggled harder. “Y-You don’t want to eat me! I bet I don’t taste very good.”

Corpse turned from where he was fighting off a number of the other children. “Sykkuno!” He dashed across the clearing, but there were too many of the children darting into his way, slowing him down just short of rescuing the other man. He managed to come close enough within reach to slice the blight child holding one of Sykkuno’s arms and in desperation dropped his scythe to the ground. “Take it!” he shouted.

Sykkuno, wide eyed and fearful, understood immediately. He had just enough reach to grasp the scythe around the staff and pull it closer, shifting his grip to a safer distance from the blade and swinging wildly. The blunt edge of the blade knocked the matron off her feet and as an added bonus also made the smooth finish of the staff slip further down his hand for a better hold purely by accident. Drawing it back, he used the sharp edge to dispel the two children from his feet. The last little blight child on his arm cut its losses and ran back to the trees in a panic. He tried to get up but stumbled down onto his knees when he saw the matron blight had also recovered. She snarled and lunged at him again. Gripping the scythe with both hands Sykkuno swung it around wildly, forcing her to jump back.

Suddenly Sykkuno was lifted back to his feet, and Corpse’s strong hand brushed over his to reclaim his weapon. With a small flourish, he righted the scythe to a more proper position and looked down with a threatening eye on the matron blight. Accepting defeat, she wrapped her robes tight around herself and followed her remaining children back into the trees.

Sykkuno glanced apprehensively around and up. “We should maybe…” he started to say, but trailed off when he noticed Corpse…

Corpse was laughing.

“Wh-What?”

Corpse disappeared his scythe and put his hand to his mouth, already covered again by the surgical mask. “It’s just…” he managed between giggles, “the way you handle it…”

“Handle what? You mean the scythe?”

“It’s- It’s not a baseball bat, Sykkuno. You don’t just swing it around like that. Ah ha ha...”

Sykkuno felt his face burn. “H-How am I supposed to know how to… to use it? I’m not cool like you are!”

Corpse suddenly wrapped him up in a hug that both surprised and, if he was honest, pleased him greatly. “You’re cute,” he murmured into Sykkuno’s hair, “just the way you are. Let’s get those strawberries back to the shop before anything else goes wrong.”

Sykkuno dropped the arms he’d been about to put around Corpse to return the hug. “Y-Yeah, you’re right…” he said, and hoped he didn’t sound too awkward. “Everyone’s waiting.”

The climb back up the road was precarious and took time but they eventually made it just as twilight was setting in. Sykkuno paused with his hand on the car door and looked back at the gap where the deck had been. “Too bad it was wrecked.”

Corpse followed his gaze and shrugged. “There are other places we can go stargazing.”

“You’re right.”

Sykkuno started the car and eased them onto the road in the direction that took them back to the city. After a moment he took a deep breath and cautiously put out the question that would confirm what he kind of already knew, “Is… so, um, is… is stuff like that going to, um, happen a lot now?”

Corpse turned his gaze away from the window and shifted position so he was sitting in the passenger seat with his body turned slightly towards Sykkuno. “Yeah…” he answered honestly.

Sykkuno swallowed hard. He had to say something to lighten the mood, not only for Corpse but for his own nerves. “Guess I’ll uh, have to learn how to use that scythe better. Maybe you can give me lessons.”

Corpse chuckled, “Maybe.”

They drove a bit further in silence and gradually Sykkuno’s cold sweat was replaced by a bubble of warmth that bloomed deep within him. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and with both hands on the wheel he had no way of hiding it. But it had suddenly occurred to him…

Corpse had said there were other places ‘we’ could go stargazing.


	4. iv

The lunch rush had calmed down and a few tables were occupied with customers chatting or reading over their coffees. Toast had gone with Sean on a supply run and Rae was taking her break, leaving Sykkuno to keep an eye on the register. He busied himself by tidying up the sugars and et cetera at the sideboard and checking to see if the trash needed emptying. That done, he stretched his hands above his head and peeked out the window. The sky was gray and laden with heavy clouds. There went his plans to go stargazing that night.

Sykkuno dropped his arms and moved back to stand behind the register. On the way he opened and closed his hands a few times to stretch his fingers after a long lunch of pulling coffee and steaming milk. In the process he noted the red marks had finally completely faded from his wrists. Even his face was looking mostly normal again.

It had been an uneventful couple of days, now that he thought of it. Thankfully. He’d already gone through enough scary moments to last a lifetime. The fact that more were sure to come was a problem he could worry about another time. Although, thinking about recent changes in his life, would he see Corpse today? What did moon spirits do on their off time anyway? Did he have a job? Where did he live? In the sky? He had so many questions about his new friend and yet when they were together the combination of not wanting to pry and Corpse naturally being a man of few words meant that not one of them ever got asked.

The door jangled and Sykkuno looked up to greet the new customer. She was cute, with long wavy hair that was dark at the roots and gradually faded to a dusty ashen blonde at the ends and a pleasant, round face. She steepled her fingers and considered the menu above Sykkuno’s head. “Hi, can I get a… cafe mocha, please? Hot.”

“For here or to go?”

“For here.”

Sykkuno accepted her payment and moved over to the machine to start making her coffee. The customer walked down to the pick up counter and leaned on her elbows, going up on her tiptoes to watch him work. She had the look of someone holding in a secret, like a cat with a canary. Sykkuno started to worry that they’d met before and he had rudely forgotten. Oh no, what if they _had_ met before and he’d forgotten? Had they met before? Had she been in the shop before?

The low-key panic had him so worked up that his voice wavered when he handed her the cafe mocha. “H-Here you go…”

“Thanks.”

Before he could fret any more, two more customers came in and it was a relief to see he recognized them at least.

“Hi Leslie, hi Edison.”

“Hi Sykkuno!” they returned the greeting.

“Looks like it’s going to rain later,” Leslie said.

“Really? Oh poop, I was going to take Bimbus for a walk after work.”

“You should get him little rain boots,” Edison suggested.

“Omigosh that would be so cute, with a little raincoat!”

Sykkuno laughed. “Yeah, yeah that would be really cute.”

Rae emerged from the back room in the process of tying her apron on. “Hey, guys, I thought I heard your voices.”

“Hi Rae.”

Rae surveyed the coffee shop. “Toast and Sean not back yet?”

Sykkuno shook his head.

She shrugged. “Take your break now anyway. It’s still not busy and I can see your friend about to come in.”

“My… who?” Sykkuno looked to the door just in time to see Corpse push his way through. “Oh. Hi Corpse.”

“Hey,” Corpse returned the greeting.

“Hi Corpse,” said another voice and Corpse stopped just short of the counter.

It took a moment. The greeting hadn’t come from Rae this time, and the two customers still standing at the sideboard he had seen before but not talked to. Eventually his search settled on another customer sitting in one of the plush chairs nearby. She was leaning all the way back with both hands around her mug of coffee, a smile on her lips.

“Brooke...”

Sykkuno had a difficult time focusing his attention after that. Corpse and the mysterious Brooke person seemed to need their space, so he spent his break talking with Leslie and Edison. But he was distracted the entire time. Who was Brooke? She and Corpse sat and talked in low voices all through Sykkuno’s break and well past when it ended. They were still talking when Toast and Sean bustled in with their arms full of packages.

“It’s started raining!” Sean announced.

“You guys should see the sky up north it looks crazy. There’s a storm coming,” Toast added.

As if to back him up, there was a rumble overhead and the rain began in earnest, closing in against the shop windows like a curtain.

Leslie looked to Edison. “Do you have an umbrella?”

“Nope.”

“Guess we’re stuck here.”

Sean paced to the door for a closer look outside and came back. “I hope it doesn’t last too long.”

“I’m sure it’s just a squall, it’ll past quickly.” Sykkuno tried to make everyone feel better, but didn’t sound convinced by his own words.

The afternoon wore on, and the storm outside only seemed to grow stronger. Most of the customers except for Leslie and Edison and Corpse and Brooke left. Eventually it got so late that the lamps outside flickered on to illuminate the rivulets of rain cascading down the windows and not much else. They were essentially boxed in.

Rae wrapped her arms around herself and stood next to Sykkuno with worry on her face. “There’s a heavy rain warning out, apparently.”

“I believe it.”

“I told the evening shift to stay home,” Toast told Sean.

“Yeah, we can just close when it’s safe to leave.”

“Whenever that is,” Leslie added wryly.

Edison patted her on the back. “At least it can’t get any…”

Before he could even finish the sentiment, the lights both in and out flickered once, twice, then went out completely. The entire coffee shop was plunged into darkness.

“...worse.”

Leslie smacked him in the arm. “You jinxed us!”

Sykkuno unconsciously stepped closer to Corpse in the dark. Corpse gave him a reassuring look over his shoulder. It didn’t miss Sykkuno’s notice that Brooke watched this exchange with an unreadable smile playing on her lips.

Toast sighed. “Looks like we’re in for the long haul. I’ll see if we have anything in the back we can snack on while we wait for the power to come back or the storm to let up and we can leave.”

“I’ll go with you, we should check the breaker just in case,” Rae followed him into the back.

“Babe, I’ll be right back, gotta use the bathroom.” Leslie got to her feet and wandered off towards the back left corner of the shop where the restrooms were located.

“I’m going to dash next door and see if they have any power,” Sean called back to them, letting himself out into the downpour before anyone could acknowledge this or try to discourage him.

Sykkuno fidgeted and his voice got very small. “A-Anyone want some water or… or anything?” He took one step towards the counter, then back to hover nervously at Corpse’s side, then one more cycle between counter and back before finally going to retrieve the pitcher of water and some glasses.

Edison got to his feet. “It’s so dark in here. Do you have an emergency kit with some candles in the back, I wonder?”

“Go ahead and ask Toast, he would know,” Sykkuno told him, and Edison stepped into the back room.

Water retrieved, Sykkuno was left with nothing to do again. His gaze darted around the darkened shop, between Corpse and Brooke and the rain-coated windows and the door to the back room and the dark corner where the restrooms were and the other little pockets of shadow and back around again. “So…” he said haltingly. Maybe now that everyone else was off doing something he could ask about Brooke, but would that be prying? Would that be rude? “So, uh…”

“Yeah,” Corpse caught on, “this is, uh…”

“I didn’t see Toast or Rae back there but I did find an emergency kit under the sink.” Edison returned and set the kit down on the table next to the one Corpse and Brooke occupied to inspect its contents. He pulled out emergency rations, a first-aid kit, a flare...

Sykkuno frowned. “You didn’t see them?” That was odd. The back room wasn’t that big…

“Ah-ha! Candles! And matches too. Ooh, and a flashlight.”

“Here, I’ll light them,” Brooke offered.

“Thanks.” Edison looked around. “Wait, Leslie’s not back yet?”

“No, I haven’t seen her since she went to the bathroom.”

Edison hefted the flashlight and turned it on experimentally. “I’ll go check on her.”

Sykkuno watched him go, then realized this left him alone with Corpse and Brooke again, so he turned back. “Um,” he began.

“Right,” Corpse continued.

Before he could go on, the door to the shop banged open and Sean stumbled in accompanied by at least a gallon or two of rainwater and a gust of wind that blew the candles out. He wiped the water from his face and slicked his hair back off it with a loud, “Pah!” before he launched into explaining, “Well, the neighbours don’t have any power either and it looks like the whole block is experiencing a blackout. Might as well settle in for the night.”

This was also when Rae and Toast finally emerged from the back room with snacks from the employee stash and some leftover pastries and sandwiches.

“What the heck was that noise?” Toast asked.

“Just Sean,” Sykkuno answered.

“Oh, okay.”

“Can someone find me a towel or something?”

“Sorry guys, I got a call from my mother while I was in the bathroom,” Leslie explained as she and Edison rejoined the group. “Apparently she still has power where she is.”

“Hey, what happened to the candles?” Edison cried, setting the flashlight down next to them.

“Also Sean,” Sykkuno answered again.

“Sorry, sorry, it’s all my fault.”

“I’ll relight them.” Brooke picked up the matches again.

Sykkuno tried not to be disappointed. Now that everyone was back, he couldn’t ask without putting Corpse unfairly on the spot. The group pulled chairs and tables together, poured out water and divied up the food. Forming a little three-quarter circle in the faint pocket of light created by the candles, everyone munched and watched the storm bluster on outside in silence.

Sykkuno didn’t have much of an appetite. He refused the sandwiches and pastries to instead nibble absently at potato chips. It seemed to be getting darker and darker, and while he kept reminding himself that it was just the late hour and the storm, his nerves continued to fray. Even still, he didn’t realize how much he’d started to fidget again until Corpse’s hand rested softly on his where it was balled into a fist on his knee. Sykkuno released the breath he’d been holding and let his fingers unclench underneath his calming touch.

He caught Brooke pointedly noticing this exchange and shyly ducked his head. He didn’t pull away from Corpse, but did take a drink of water to distract himself from her gaze. In the process of doing so he saw that Toast and Rae had noticed too. Oh jesus, if Sean saw he’d never hear the end of it. Probably he should move his hand. He really should move his hand. While he debated, his hand twitched and Corpse’s fingertips slipped briefly down to curl around his palm and give him a slight squeeze before letting go.

Sykkuno wasn't sure how he felt about that.

Some time later, Leslie looked up from her phone and asked, “Does anyone have a charger? I’m down to 9%.”

“You can use mine,” Toast retrieved his from the back room, but paused on his way back to squint towards the sideboard with an inquisitive, “Hn?”

“What is it?”

Toast took a step in the direction of the sideboard and leaned forward to look closely. He tilted his head to the side and shrugged, then rejoined the group. “I thought I saw something move over there.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t mean like a rat or a roach or something?” Rae wrinkled her nose.

“Not in _my_ coffee shop!” Sean declared.

“No, nothing like that,” Toast sniffed and popped a potato chip in his mouth. “Probably it was just the candles flickering or something.”

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Edison suggested.

In response Leslie gave an exaggerated shiver and Rae moaned, “Don’t. Don’t… just, don’t even…”

“Not in _my_ coffee shop!” Sean declared again.

“Is there like, pest control for ghosts, do you think?” Toast wondered.

“I think those are called exorcists, Toast,” Rae pointed out dryly.

“I thought exorcists were for demons or something, what about ghosties who are just hanging around living their best lives?” Toast wondered aloud.

“Is a ghost really living its best life if it’s dead?” Edison asked.

“You know what I mean.”

Sykkuno put his hand to his face and laughed. He glanced in Corpse’s direction and was surprised to see he and Brooke weren’t laughing, or even smiling. Instead they looked oddly serious. Wait, so did that mean… Did Toast actually see something? Sykkuno shot the sideboard an apprehensive look.

“Don’t.” Corpse leaned over to murmur in his ear. “With this many people here they might not try anything.”

So there were the… the shadow people? Spirits? Whatever they were, here. Sykkuno took a shaky breath and gave a short nod to confirm he understood.

“I’ll handle it,” Brooke said smoothly. She knocked her hand against her cup and some water sloshed over onto the table. “Oops. I’ll get some napkins.”

“You sure?” Corpse asked.

“Yeah, no problem. They won’t see a thing.”

Sykkuno watched her go to the sideboard, but Corpse nudged him and he turned back. Handle it? How? Yet another question to ask later, sometime.

“No more talk about ghosts! Someone tell a fun story!” Leslie begged them and the conversation moved on to topics that didn’t involve mysterious movements in the corner.

The time with the rain and the blackout dragged on. Conversation ebbed and flowed, Sean went to the back room to check that nothing was melting in the fridges and Rae followed him to bring back some juice. Edison, Leslie, and Sykkuno took the flashlight on a bathroom trip. Toast paced around the room to look out and try to see if anyone on the street had power back yet. Corpse and Brooke remained in their seats, a little pocket of calm for the others to return to.

It was almost midnight when there was a blip outside the window and the street lamp immediately outside the coffee shop flickered back on.

Leslie was the first to notice, sitting up from where she had her head resting on Edison’s shoulder to point and raise her voice and alert the others.

“Ugh, _finally_ ,” Rae slumped down in her chair. She waved her hands at the ceiling. “Where’s our lights?”

“Good question,” Sykkuno looked up and around.

“Tripped breaker?” Edison suggested.

Toast picked up the flashlight. “I’ll go check.”

Sean went to the door and peered out through the veritable waterfall still coating all the windows. “Still doesn’t look safe enough to leave though. Might still be safer to just stay here tonight.”

Sykkuno looked around and tried to remember everyone’s living situations. If need be, he was willing to offer those who lived too far away shelter at his place.

In any case, people were starting to shift around and tentatively clean up and prepare to leave when suddenly from the back room they heard Toast yell, “What the fuck?!”

“Toast?!” Rae ran to check on him, followed by all the rest.

Away from the ambient light of the windows and the candles, the back room was pitch black. Sykkuno hesitated on entering, but Corpse’s hand on his back encouraged him forward and he crowded in with everyone else to see what had alarmed Toast.

Toast’s position could be found by the beam of the flashlight, playing over the breaker box at the very, very back of the room behind where the storage shelves and lockers holding all manner of cleaning supplies and seasonal decorations, stock, and other random things that collected in the backs of stores over time stood.

“What’s wrong, Toast?” Rae asked.

“I was flipping the switches and nothing was happening, which was weird.” Toast’s voice was clearly irritated. “Then I happened to move the flashlight up and look.” He slid the beam upwards to where it rested on the wires connecting the breaker box to the outside…

The _cut_ wires connecting the breaker box to the outside.

“Who did this?!” Toast demanded.

“Who would do this?!” Rae raised her voice.

“Surely none of us could have done it,” Sean said.

“Maybe it was the ghost?” Edison suggested.

“Yeah, maybe it was the ghost!” Leslie chimed in, desperate for some levity to the situation.

“Wait, when did that even happen?” Sykkuno wondered aloud.

“Let’s go back to the main room,” Brooke suggested reasonably.

“Yeah, good… good idea,” Corpse agreed.

All eight of them shuffled back out to the main area of the shop where they stood around the table with the candles and began discussing all at once about what happened and what their options were.

Sykkuno moved closer to Corpse and lowered his voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “Could it have been that… that shadow Toast saw earlier?”

“No,” Corpse murmured back. He shot a glance at Brooke who answered it with an impish grin and then looked around. “Most likely, one of us is an imposter.”

“What?!”

“What is it, Sykkuno?” Toast demanded.

Sykkuno clamped his hand over his mouth reflexively and quickly fumbled for something to say. “Corpse… Corpse… Corpse thinks that it, it actually _could_ have been someone here who cut the wires.” He didn’t want to lie, so he had to be creative with the truth, “It could even have been me!”

“Sykkuno, it couldn’t have been you,” Rae pointed out, “You never went in the back room.”

“Yeah, you were with Corpse and me the whole time,” Brooke added.

“Oh, that’s right…”

“Corpse has a point though,” Toast said slowly, folding his arms and tucking in his chin thoughtfully. “It had to have been one of us.”

Sykkuno shot Corpse a questioning look that conveyed his mental, _are you sure?_ as clearly as possible. Corpse nodded.

Sykkuno spoke slowly, organized his words carefully as he went. “Okay… okay guys, this is… this is going to sound weird but bear with me… one of us here, is… is not who they seem.”

Toast frowned across the table at him. “Sykkuno, if you wanted to play Mafia to pass the time you could have just said so. Now isn’t really...”

Sykkuno waved his hands in front of him. “N-No, I mean... a-actually- yeah, yeah, let’s… let’s pretend this is like a game of Mafia. Who do you think is the bad guy here, Toast? Which of us could have cut those wires?”

“Sykkuno,” Rae scoffed, “Why would any of us…?”

“Yeah, Sykkuno, what reason would any of us have for cutting the wires?” Sean interjected.

“Let’s just…” Sykkuno looked between everyone and fumbled for words, “Um, think of it as a… as a thought exercise…!”

Leslie looked out at the still ridiculous amount of rain trapping them inside. “Not like we have anything else to do, right?” She enthusiastically put her hands on the table. “Who is it? Who did it, Toast?”

“Yeah, whodunnit, Sherlock?” Edison chimed in.

“Do you want me to do it in a British accent?”

“No.”

“No, that’s fine.”

“You don’t have to.”

Toast looked put out for a moment then re-crossed his arms. “So, what we need to do is think about who had the opportunity to mess with the breaker box? Who among us has time where they can’t be accounted for by another person?”

Sykkuno was the first to offer information, “Well, like Brooke said, she, Corpse, and me have been together almost this whole time.”

“Yeah, we haven’t been into the back room at all except for just now,” Corpse added.

“Toast was the first person to go into the back room,” Rae pointed out.

“Yeah, but you joined me right away,” Toast countered.

“You were the first person to mention the breaker box, come to think of it, Rae,” Edison said slowly.

“The power had just gone out, of course I did!” Rae’s voice rose a notch as she defended herself.

“Edison also went into the back room,” Brooke said.

“Yeah, to get the emergency kit, and I didn’t see you two anywhere!”

“What? I don’t remember you coming in.” Rae looked skeptical.

“I totally did!”

“No, I remember hearing him come in,” Toast said slowly.

“If you say so...”

“Who else was alone?” Toast asked.

“Um, well, Leslie was in the bathroom for a long time at the start...” Sykkuno brought up.

“I was talking to my mom!”

“...and Sean went next door to check if they had power.”

“Yeah, and I came back looking like a drowned rat. My clothes are _still_ damp.”

“Hmm…” Toast considered all the information. “Was anyone else ever alone in the back room except for those times we already mentioned?”

“Just you, when you went to get me your charger, I think…” Leslie answered.

Toast rocked on his heels and hrmm...ed as he pondered the mystery. “I know it wasn’t me and Rae at the beginning of the night… we were having a discussion in the back corner.”

“What about?” Sykkuno asked.

Toast’s eyes flicked briefly towards Corpse before he waved his hand dismissively. “That’s not important right now. We can vouch for each other. Edison only got the emergency kit, and if he had gone to the breaker box, he would have seen us and Rae would have seen him, so it wasn’t him.”

So far it seemed to make sense.

“Leslie _could_ have snuck back there while she was ‘in the bathroom’ but that seems kind of risky. Someone probably would have noticed…”

“Do you want to call my mother? She can be my alibi.” Leslie waved her phone.

“Edison, was she still on the phone when you went to find her?” Toast inquired.

“Yeah, I said hi too.”

“Okay, that’s good enough for me.” Toast huffed and turned towards Sean. “There is a back entrance you could have snuck in but Rae and I would have seen you.”

“Also, again, I was sopping wet. There’d be like, little puddles anywhere I went,” Sean defended himself.

“That is true…” Sykkuno set his chin on his hand and pondered along with Toast.

“Are we sure no one else was ever in the back room by themselves?” Corpse asked.

“Wait, Rae, didn’t you go to get us juice?” Toast suddenly asked.

“Yeah, with Sean.”

“I never went to get juice.”

“Yes, you did! I remember you were looking in the freezer.” Rae snapped back.

“No wait, didn't he say he was going to check if anything was melting just before Rae got us juice?” Edison said slowly.

Sykkuno nodded, looking to Toast, who was also making a few short nods to signify he had remembered this incident as well.

Sean scoffed. “How could I have been looking in the freezer if you had the only flashlight, Rae?”

“I don’t know! But you were there!”

"I wasn't!"

"Yes you were! We all saw you go, right guys?" Rae looked around at everyone.

"Yeah, yeah, I do remember that," Edison backed her up.

"Me too, I think…" Sykkuno added.

Sean scoffed again, but admitted, "Okay, yeah, maybe I was but Rae just said she was with me."

"No, you went ahead of her," Edison argued.

"Yeah Sean, you went ahead of me."

"How did Sean see back there before Rae came in with the flashlight?" Leslie wondered aloud.

“Yeah, Sean, how did you find your way around back there without a light?” Brooke asked, her voice smug and a knowing smile on her face.

Sean took a half step away from the group. “You think I don’t know my way around my own shop in the dark?”

“Kinda hard to see if anything’s melting though,” Corpse added, backing Brooke up, “unless you can see in the dark or something.”

“See in the dark…?” Sykkuno repeated. Then it hit him, Sean was an imposter!

Detective Toast had come to the same conclusion, more or less. He didn’t know about the shadow imposters, naturally, but it was clear who had sabotaged their electricity. “Why’d you do it, Sean?!”

Imposter Sean sputtered, trying to come up with a way to defend himself.

“Sean…” Rae said, sounding more wounded by the idea than anything.

“Your own shop?” Edison shook his head.

“Why?” Leslie demanded.

Imposter Sean took another step back.

Brooke put her hand on Corpse’s shoulder and lowered her voice so that only he and Sykkuno could hear. “He’s going to run.”

“Probably he was waiting until later when they fell asleep or something,” Corpse began to move around Sykkuno to approach Imposter Sean.

Imposter Sean seemed to cut his losses. He turned around so fast his shoes squeaked against the floor and he dashed out the door into the rain. Corpse, Brooke, and Sykkuno followed while the others shouted and cried out protests and questions.

Out in the rain, Corpse wheeled around and shouted to Sykkuno, “Check the neighbouring store to see if the real Sean is still there.”

It was still raining so hard that despite the fact that they were barely two feet apart it was still difficult to hear and see him. “Right!” Sykkuno spun around and ran in the opposite direction, his already sopping wet sneakers squelching with every step.

Corpse waited just long enough to make sure he made it to the door okay before he followed Brooke in chasing down Imposter Sean.

Back at the shop, Toast, Rae, Leslie, and Edison looked between themselves in utter bafflement. What was going _on_?

They wouldn’t get any answers until much later, when the rain had finally tapered off ever so slightly and the winds had calmed. The interior of the shop was split evenly into two groups as they all gathered their things and prepared to leave; the dry confused group and the soaking wet reticent group.

Detective Toast was stuck on one point. “You were really next door this whole time?”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Sean leaned heavily on a chair, looking kind of green, “but I must’ve eaten something bad for lunch or something today because I’ve been puking my guts out in their staff bathroom all evening.”

“Wait,” Rae shook her head. “Then who was here with us all this time?”

“It sure wasn’t me,” Sean shrugged, then put his hand to his mouth to suppress a sickly burp.

Sykkuno hovered next to him twisting his fingers nervously. “Sean, Sean do you need… should I get a garbage can or, like, a, a bucket or something for you?”

“Sykkuno, I have nothing else in me to throw up, I think, I hope, but thank you.”

Toast turned on Corpse and Brooke, “And what happened when you chased that not-Sean guy?”

“Uh…” Brooke stalled.

“We uh, lost sight of him,” Corpse nervously adjusted his mask.

“Maybe it was a ghost impersonating Sean,” Edison hefted his backpack and took Leslie’s hand.

“Or maybe a uh, a what’s-it-called,” Leslie suggested, “a doppelganger?”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Rae threw up her hands in frustration.

“L-Look, let’s just forget about it for now and… and figure it out later, okay guys?” Sykkuno pleaded. “Someone really should get Sean home where he can rest.” Hopefully before anyone noticed the red marks on his wrists and equated them to the ones that had been on Sykkuno’s not too long ago. Thankfully it seemed like Sean didn’t remember anything about what had happened when the shadow creature copied him, but Sykkuno felt terrible all the same.

“We should also go just in case this is only the eye of the storm and it picks up again,” Leslie said, with a quick glance outside.

“Good point.” Toast picked up his bag. “I’ll drive Rae and Sean home. Leslie and Edison you’re parked nearby too, right? Corpse, Brooke?”

“Oh, they’re going to come to my place to dry off and wait out the storm,” Sykkuno told him.

“And play with Bimbus,” Corpse added quietly.

“And play with Bimbus,” Sykkuno nodded.

“Okay, I’ll call someone to come fix the breaker box in the morning. Guess we’ll just be closed for tomorrow. I’ll text you if they’re busy with storm cleanup and we have to go without power for longer.” Toast swung his arms to herd everyone out of the shop ahead of him. He locked the door and they all parted ways.

Bimbus was super happy to have guests, bouncing between Sykkuno, Corpse, and Brooke and excitedly slip-sliding around on the wood floor. Sykkuno fussed about, shushing his dog and finding towels for them all. His head was full of questions now that they were finally apart from the rest of the group but didn’t know where or how to start. Did he have any tea in the kitchen? Or maybe some instant soup or something?

Brooke sat next to Corpse at the table and towelled off her hair. “He is cute,” she said with a smile.

“Yeah, yeah he is…” Corpse looked up from scratching Bimbus behind the ears. Wait, did she mean… did he just agree to…?

Sykkuno paused in staring down the kitchen and turned to face them. “Okay, I have to ask…”

Brooke began giggling. “You’ve been dying to ask all day.”

It was true but Sykkuno blushed just the same. “Can you blame me?”

“Surely you’ve figured it out by now? At least partially?”

Sykkuno put his hand to his chin and thought on it. “Wait... “ Lightbulb moment. “Oh! Brooke, are you… are you also…?”

Brooke and Corpse exchanged a look. She answered first, with the still-cryptic answer of, “We’re kind of like… siblings!”

“Wait, what? Siblings?” Sykkuno noticed Corpse watching him with that look in his eye like he was holding back laughter. He sat down in one of the open kitchen chairs. “Corpse?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, we should have said something earlier but with everyone there…” Corpse chuckled. “Remember what I told you about me and the moon?”

“Yeah?”

“Brooke is like that but with the stars.”

“Oh, she’s a… a star spirit.” Sykkuno tried to nod like he understood but his confusion still showed on his face. It wasn’t something you were told every day but actually it was kind of turning into something Corpse told him every day.

“Yeah, I took care of the shadow impersonating your boss for you, too. You can thank me later,” Brooke cheerfully told him.

Sykkuno nodded more for lack of a better response. “Cafe mocha, right?”

“Yup!”

“So, just to be clear… you’re not going to… to try to kill me, right, are you, Brooke?”

Her smile grew and she leaned forward to drop her voice to a lower register and answer, “No, but I could if I wanted to.”

“Wh-What…?”

Corpse shook his head at her. “Don’t scare him like that.”

Brooke giggled and assured Sykkuno, “I don’t want his smelly old eye anyway.”

“Bitch,” Corpse smiled.

“Okay… um…” The sibling analogy was beginning to make sense. “You guys want tea or something warm to drink? I don’t know if moon and star spirits catch cold but--” Human Sykkuno broke off mid-sentence with a well-timed sneeze.

“Make some tea, Sykkuno,” Corpse told him.

“Yeah, let’s have tea and play video games,” Brooke suggested cheerfully.

“Okay,” Sykkuno got up and went to the kitchen, one hand cupped around his grin. “You guys choose a game.”


	5. v

“Hi Corpse,” Rae greeted him by name the moment he came in.

“Hey, Rae.” Corpse noted who was behind the counter with her. “Hey, Poki.”

“Hi.”

“Sykkuno’s working the evening shift today.”

“I know, I uh… I thought I’d wait for him. Had nothing else to do today...”

“I see,” Rae seemed to accept this. “Want some tea? What do we have for herbal tea right now?”

Poki inspected the boxes. “Sean dropped off a whole bunch of new ones this morning. We have chamomile, yuzu, ginger, mixed berry, hibiscus, rooibos, peppermint, and a lemongrass green tea.”

“That’s right, he heard from Sykkuno that you like herbal tea so he ordered a whole bunch of new ones.”

Corpse was as equally baffled by Sean’s gesture as much as Rae and Poki’s utter nonchalance in telling him about it. Really? Was everyone who worked at this coffee shop so unbelievably wholesome? “U-Uh…” he stuttered, “Uh, g-ginger sounds good.”

“One ginger tea, coming right up.” Poki took down a mug and began preparing it.

Corpse paid for his tea, picked it up from Poki, and sat with his hands around the mug to zone out and watch the world pass by. The coffee shop was warm and the ambient noise from the other customers was at just the right level to not be distracting. The combination could almost lull him to sleep if he let it…

Before he could consider the pros and cons of napping until Sykkuno came to work, Rae dropped herself into the chair next to him.

Corpse looked at Rae. Rae looked at Corpse.

“You look tired,” she said out of nowhere.

“I’m always tired.” He was nocturnal to begin with, after all.

“Stargazing, huh?”

He made a noncommittal half-nod and sipped his tea. Why was Rae sitting next to him? Surely she had more to say than just comment on how he looked tired. Had he done something wrong? Did she suspect something about his friendship with Sykkuno or even something about the Imposter Sean incident? Was she going to pull a protective big sister move and warn him to stay away from Sykkuno?

“Corpse, relax,” Rae said dryly. She shifted position to curl one leg underneath her and set her elbow on the back of the chair. “I just thought we could chat.”

Had his internal panic been that apparent or was she a mind-reader? Corpse sat back and cautiously said, “Okay…? What do you want to talk about?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Whatever you’re comfortable talking about. I just… wanted to get to know you better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So…” she dragged the word out as she searched for a question. “What other hobbies do you have besides stargazing and looking at Sykkuno like he’s the most magical creature you’ve ever seen?”

Caught off guard, Corpse wheezed out a laugh. His cheeks burned and he pulled up his mask in a futile attempt to hide it. Finally he managed, “Well, well uh,” he broke off with another embarrassed chuckle, “I like music?”

“Oh yeah? What kind?”

They were still talking music when Poki came over to interrupt. “Hey, Rae? There’s some seminar going on near by and they just called asking if we can get thirty coffees ready for pickup in fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen m--” Rae’s indignation wouldn’t even let her finish repeating it.

“They’re all the same order at least?”

“Lattes?”

“Yeah.”

“At least they called in advance. But ask them for twenty minutes.” Rae got up and followed Poki back to the counter. “Thirty coffees in fifteen minutes, that’s insane…”

Poki took the phone off hold and relayed to the customer that they would accept their order. Together the two girls started pulling coffee and steaming milk. Corpse wondered to himself if thirty coffees in twenty minutes was feasible. It didn’t really sound like it, but Rae and Poki were professionals so maybe if they were both working on them it was possible? How long did it take to make a latte?

The door jangled and a group of teenaged girls entered. They were already in the middle of discussing what they wanted to order, effectively upping the difficulty level of Rae and Poki’s task.

“Corpse! Corpse!!” Rae shouted over the espresso machine. Not expecting to hear his name, it took him a moment to respond. She darted to the end to look around the machine at him and pointed to the register. “Can you take their orders?”

“Who, me?”

“Yeah, you. We need to concentrate on making coffees.”

“Wh-Wha…?” Corpse looked between Rae and the expectant group of teenagers. “A-Are you sure…?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Get over here.”

“Okay,” Corpse got up and slunk around the counter to stand at the register. It felt wrong. Being on this side of the counter felt wrong. “Okay, okay. Wh-What do I do?”

“Take their orders.”

“Right, right… take their orders…” Corpse squinted at the screen, there were lots of buttons, but Rae wasn’t going to take no for an answer and the customers were waiting. “Uh, okay, what… what do you--” No, that was too rude. Calm down, Corpse, you can do this. “What would you like?”

Luckily the group of teenagers were patient with him, ordering one at a time and waiting without complaint while he fumbled through taking their payments. Rae and Poki furiously made coffee after coffee. Rae only paused once to point at Corpse and tell him, “Stay, just, stay there okay, in case anyone else comes in.”

She was honestly scaring him a bit. “Okay, okay… okay...”

“You can, you can have all the tea you want after this is over, I promise. Just stay. there.”

“Yeah, yeah, I will.”

Finally a middle aged lady in a suit and a young man who appeared to be her assistant entered and identified themselves as coming from the seminar to pick up their order. Rae and Poki divided the coffees up six to a flat-bottomed and reinforced bag while Corpse shakily took their payment. Once seminar lady and her assistant had successfully navigated their bags of coffee out the door, the two coffee shop employees and one unwitting temporary employee collectively gave a sigh of relief.

“I hate to ask but, do you mind if I take my break now?” Poki asked.

“After what we just went through, by all means. Corpse can stay on the register if more customers come in,” Rae told her.

Corpse froze in the process of retrieving his tea. “Wait, what?”

“Right, Corpse?” Rae stared him down. “Right?”

His fate was sealed. “Y-Yeah, right. Go ahead, Poki.”

Poki looked back and forth between them and slowly backed away. “Oookay, I’m just gonna… grab my bag from the back… and go… on my break…”

Some customers left, so Rae went to clear their table while Corpse hovered nervously and drank his now cold ginger tea. Lo and behold another customer came in and Rae shouted, “Take their order, I’ll be right there to make it.”

Corpse hurried behind the counter and greeted the customer. Rae crossed the room, confirmed their order for a soy latte with a shot of vanilla, and handed Corpse the tray of dirty mugs and bunched up napkins. “Just put those in the sink in the back for now.”

Corpse dutifully took the tray into the back room, adding his own used mug to the collection because why not. There, he paused. Rae had said to put them in the sink but should he wash them? Or at least rinse them? Was it okay to just set everything down, tray and all, or should he put the napkins in the trash? What was he even doing?

He was too afraid of breaking something to wash the mugs so he opted to just throw the napkins in the trash and venture back out for whatever Rae would ask him to do next. Oh, god, there was a line of three new customers waiting. How? Why now?

“Corpse.”

“Got it.”

Once he got the hang of it, Corpse found that he and Rae made a pretty good team. The flow of taking, relaying, confirming, and filling orders went smoothly through the entire mini rush of customers. It had just died down when Poki returned from her break.

“Hey, I brought you guys sandwiches and apple coleslaw from Peter and Ludwig’s place.”

“Nice. What was today’s sandwich?”

“Ham, swiss, and potato chip on sourdough.”

“Ooh. C’mon Corpse, you deserve a sandwich after all that.” Rae took the food from Poki and herded Corpse to an empty table.

“There’s some water bottles in there too for you guys.”

“Poki, you are a lifesaver omigod.” Rae set one of the bottles in front of Corpse along with a sandwich and a fork and a napkin. She opened the coleslaw between them, urged him to eat, and sat cross-legged on the chair. As she unwrapped her sandwich she offered her lunch buddy a sheepish grin. “Thanks for all your help, I know you said you were tired.”

“No, no it’s fine…” Corpse considered his sandwich. “I’m uh… just glad I could help.”

Rae helped herself to some coleslaw. “You know, I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“Well, I mean, no offense but,” she gestured with her fork, “look at you, all black clothes with your chains and your rings on, don’t show your face, and your deep scary voice,” she emphasised this with an unsuccessful but commendable attempt at imitating his ‘deep scary voice’, then spread her arms illustratively, “and then you look at Sykkuno, the soft-spoken patron saint of serotonin who’s about as threatening as a newborn kitten, and...” More illustrative hand waving, then she picked up her sandwich and quirked an eyebrow at him. “You get what I mean?”

“I get what you mean,” Poki called over from the counter.

Rae gave Corpse a look that clearly conveyed a pointed, _See?_.

“I think I have an idea,” Corpse admitted.

“But you’re a good person,” Rae said, her tone softening. “Your friendship or whatever it is between you and Sykkuno just kind of came out of nowhere, but it seems genuine. I think we’re lucky to know you.”

Corpse was so moved he didn’t know what to say. “Uh, th-thanks Rae…”

“You ever hurt him and I’ll kill you, though.”

“I uh, don’t doubt that.” Especially not after today.

The door to the coffee shop opened and Sykkuno came in for his shift. “Hi Poki. Oh, Hi Corpse, hi Rae.” He detoured on the way to get his apron and approached Corpse and Rae’s little lunch party. “What’re you guys talking about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Rae grinned at him evilly over her sandwich.

“Uhh?” Sykkuno paused in confusion. When no explanation appeared forthcoming, he changed track. “Is that a sandwich from Peter and Ludwig’s?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what Poki said.”

“Yup!” she confirmed for him.

“You wanna share?” Corpse offered.

“Uh, thanks Corpse. I mean, if you don’t mind? It looks really good but I can run and get my own if you’re hungry and you wanna eat it all yourself.”

“No, it’s fine. You can have half, here.”

“Yeah, sit down and join us, Sykkuno. If Poki needs help Corpse can go man the register.” Rae hooked her foot around a chair at the neighbouring table and pulled it out for Sykkuno.

“Oh, okay,” Sykkuno accepted the sandwich offered to him and sat down. “If you say so…” It took a moment for the rest of what Rae said to sink in. “Wait, Corpse?”

“Yeah, I might uh, I might steal your job.”

“Yeah, Sykkuno, he might steal your job.”

Wait, when did Corpse and Rae become such good friends? Sykkuno was kind of pleased that they were getting along but not sure how to handle them both ganging up on him like this. “Corpse, you can’t steal my job. I have… I have Bimbus to support and, and how would I pay my… uh, my water bill, if I didn’t have this job?”

Corpse laughed. “Okay, okay.”

“I guess you can keep your job,” Rae groaned in mock disappointment.

“For Bimbus’ sake,” Corpse added.

“For Bimbus’ sake.” Rae’s eyes sparkled with mischief. She was revelling in Sykkuno’s confusion.

Sykkuno put his sandwich in front of his face to cover his smile and giggled. Whatever he had missed that afternoon, as long as his friends were happy, he was happy too. All the same though, hopefully someone would explain later.


	6. vi

“Hey, Sykkuno, I need you to come with me to pick up supplies today. My car is in the shop for a tune up and Sean is busy.”

Sykkuno glanced around the shelves behind the counter. They were running low on a few things, so it seemed like a good idea. As it got closer to summer the number of take-out orders had increased so people could enjoy the weather. “That big restaurant supply place?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to go now?”

“We could go now. It’s not too busy and Rae can handle things by herself for a couple hours until the evening shift gets here.” Toast readily answered. Too readily.

“You could at least ask me first,” Rae swatted him with a towel. “But yeah, go ahead. I’ve got things here.”

Sykkuno and Toast exited the shop and as they approached his building Sykkuno asked, "Do you mind if I check in on Bimbus real quick? I want to make sure he has enough water."

Toast didn't have a problem with it, so they detoured inside. Sykkuno toed off his sneakers and shuffled into the kitchen. "Hey Bimb, were you thirsty? Looks like you were. Go say hi to Toast."

Toast gave Bimbus some pets and glanced around while he waited in the entrance-slash-dining area. Sykkuno's table was full of the usual stuff that tended to accumulate there, but Toast also spied two used drink glasses. He indicated them when Sykkuno came back.

"You had someone over?"

Sykkuno looked at the glasses. "Uh-huh."

"Corpse?" Toast guessed.

"Yup." Sykkuno had a smile on his face as he stooped to tie on his shoes.

"Hmm…" Toast considered this not at all surprising information. "You two have been spending a lot of time together, huh?"

"I guess?" Sykkuno locked the door after them. “Corpse is nice.”

“He is,” Toast agreed. “At least now you won’t ask me to go stargazing with you anymore.”

"Ha ha, yeah."

The drive to the supply store wasn’t long. Sykkuno hadn’t nearly been there as many times as Toast, so he followed along with the cart and let Toast lead the way around. They had just turned down an aisle lined with straws, chopsticks, and other disposable cutlery when Sykkuno suddenly got a prickly feeling and goosebumps all over. The fluorescent lights above them began to flicker, causing both him and Toast to pause and look up.

Toast shrugged and kept walking.

But Sykkuno stayed rooted to the spot.

Because he could hear it.

“ _...Something about this one. He’s still stopped._ ”

Sykkuno’s skin crawled. He felt it approach him from behind.

“ _Can he hear me…?_ ”

“Earth to Sykkuno, come on,” Toast called from further down the aisle.

“Oh, oh right…” Sykkuno jolted into action and pushed the cart to join him. His mouth was dry and the words came out sounding cracked even to his own ears.

The lights overhead continued to flicker.

“ _Wait… waiiiit… _” the voice followed him. “ _I see it now…_ ”__

__Sykkuno kept ignoring it, hoping Toast would find everything he needed quickly and they could leave before the worst happened, before the shadow realized…_ _

__The voice of the shadow creature sounded directly in his ear with a puff of frigid air. “You have a bit of the moon in you!”_ _

__Sykkuno smacked at his ear reflexively, so hard it made a sound and caused Toast to look over his shoulder at him. “Uh…” he frantically threw out the first excuse he could find, “mosquito?”_ _

__“This time of year?”_ _

__“Weird, huh? Or maybe I was wrong.”_ _

__Toast resumed his shopping, and luckily it seemed he couldn’t hear the shadow. It continued to follow along behind them, marvelling all the time at Sykkuno and his moon-ness._ _

__“You have a bit of the moon in you! A human! How? Why?”_ _

__Out of desperation, Sykkuno tried shushing the shadow. It didn’t seem like it was going to attack. He glanced up at the flickering lights and wondered, was it too weak to turn them out completely?_ _

__“Imagine what I could do with a bit of the moon!”_ _

__The shadow continued to chatter on, sounding both sinister and childish at once. Maybe if Sykkuno ignored it, it would go away. Really, ignoring it was the best he could do. Corpse wasn’t there to go into scary scythe mode and rescue him. Sykkuno made up his mind to just keep his head down and hope he and Toast could get out of there as soon as possible without incident. It was just a little shadow creature. It couldn’t even turn the lights off. Nothing to be scared of._ _

__“Give it to me.”_ _

__Startled by the sudden display of malicious intent in its voice, Sykkuno didn’t notice they reached the end of the aisle and bumped a display of paper towels that were on sale. Luckily only two fell off the stack. Toast clucked his tongue at him and picked them up._ _

__“Watch where you’re going.”_ _

__“Right, s-sorry…” Sykkuno began a mental mantra of _please go away, please go away_._ _

__Unsurprisingly, the shadow did not go away. The flickering lights followed them along with it. It whispered constantly in Sykkuno’s ear, prodding him and generally being a nuisance. Toast got increasingly irritated at the lights and at Sykkuno being distracted, and the whole shopping trip grew progressively more into a miserable experience for everyone involved._ _

__It reached a boiling point when they entered a section of the store along the wall where the shelves were higher and it was more difficult for the overhead lights to reach. Here the shadow creature had enough power to actually grab at Sykkuno. He tried to deal with it as best he could but eventually it got hold of his ankle and pulled him off his feet. Sykkuno went down hard on the concrete floor, accidentally kicking the cart and sending it crashing into Toast, nearly knocking him over as well._ _

__Toast wheeled around and snapped, “Sykkuno, what are you doing?”_ _

__With Toast’s eyes on them, the shadow creature gave up on trying to worm its way into Sykkuno’s mouth and let go of him. Disconcertingly Sykkuno lost track of it in the process. He winced and got back to his feet, biting his lip at Toast in apology. “Sorry I, uh... I slipped?”_ _

__“You’ve been acting weird ever since we got here!” Toast shoved the cart back at him. “Was it something I said? Do you think I'm mad about you and Corpse or something?”_ _

__Where did that come from? “What, no! Why, why would you even be mad?”_ _

__Toast still had the cart in a white-knuckle grip. “Okay maybe not mad, that's not the right word. More like, I mean,” the words tumbled out of him, “he showed up right around the time you came into work with your face all beat up and wouldn't tell us why, can you blame me for being just a little concerned?!”_ _

__Some of the defensive tension Sykkuno hadn’t even realized he’d had eased out of his shoulders. His voice softened. “Toast, you don't think…?”_ _

__Toast put a hand through his hair and blew out a frustrated sigh. “No. Not now, but I sure didn't know what to think at the time. I still don't really know.” He frowned hard at the hand he still had gripping the cart. “It just feels like there’s some weird shit going on with you lately, you know? But if you don't want to talk about it...”_ _

__Sykkuno struggled to find something to say. “Um… Toast, I…”_ _

__Before he could reach a decision on whether to continue to avoid the issue or come clean and tell his friend everything, Sykkuno noticed the shadow creature had curled itself around Toast. Suddenly it made sense; Corpse had mentioned the shadows spread fear. Toast’s concerns about Sykkuno were probably real, the shadow creature was amplifying them until they reached the point where it got… whatever benefit it was the shadows got out of it._ _

__"Give me that bit of the moon," the shadow had no facial features but Sykkuno could feel it leering at him, "or I'll devour your friend."_ _

__"Dev--" Sykkuno almost repeated on reflex and how would he have explained that?_ _

__Toast huffed. "Let's just pay for this stuff and go."_ _

__He took over control of the cart and started walking. The shadow still clung to him, giggling all the way._ _

__Sykkuno twisted his hands and thought fast. He had to do something. He had to save Toast. He had to… he had to drive away the darkness. Could he do it on his own? Sykkuno closed his eyes and concentrated. He had once before, apparently… He searched deep within himself and found it; starting at his left eye and filling him with an indescribable feeling, like the weightless disconnect when waking from a deep sleep. Sykkuno remembered the desperation that night he first picked up Corpse's scythe and threw himself into just blindly rescuing him. But this time he didn't have a weapon, just his hands, so..._ _

__Sykkuno ran forward and just like that night it was clumsy but effective. He had too much momentum and couldn't stop before he bumped into Toast's back, his arms swinging wildly forward into an ungraceful hug from behind. The shadow gave a little shriek as he came into contact with it and dissipated._ _

__"Oof, what the-?!"_ _

__Well, this was awkward. "U-Um, uh, sorry Toast?" For everything._ _

__Toast squinted over his shoulder at him, then shook his head and reached up to pat him on the arm. "You're so weird sometimes."_ _

__Sykkuno chuckled. "You got everything you needed?"_ _

__"Yup, let's go."_ _

__

__They stopped for pizza on the way back at a little drive-in place with picnic tables set outside. Sykkuno mulled over the afternoon’s events as he munched on his slice._ _

__Toast had been rather quiet ever since his outburst, which had given Sykkuno time to think and a lot to think about. Sykkuno knew Toast well enough that, while he didn’t come out and say it, he was looking out for him. When Sykkuno had started living on his own, even before working together for Sean, he’d relied on Toast a lot. Even though they were only a year apart, sometimes it felt like level-headed Toast was much more of an adult than he would ever be._ _

__But he still was hesitant to consider explaining the recent changes in his life. It would just cause unnecessary worry for Toast, and that wasn’t something Sykkuno wanted to put his friend through._ _

__“Hey, Toast?”_ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

__“You know I really appreciate you always being there for me, right?”_ _

__“That why you were feeling up my titties back there at the store?”_ _

__Sykkuno choked on his pizza. “What?!”_ _

__Toast cupped his chest and looked scandalized. “I realize they’re just the right size, but come on, Sykkuno, there’s a time and a place.”_ _

__“Y-You’re- that’s- Toast, I, I, I would… I would never…” Sykkuno sputtered. The right size for what?_ _

__“You know you’re supposed to wine and dine me beforehand, too, right?” Toast mercilessly continued teasing him. “This is _after_.”_ _

__“Wine and…? You’d sell your body for roadside pizza and sodas?”_ _

__“Hey man, this is good pizza.”_ _

__

__“Yeah,” Corpse confirmed for him later, “the shadows feed on fear to gain more power. It’s why they copy and impersonate people. It gives them a greater range, or reach, I guess. They can cause havoc and spread fear even in the light if they have a human form.”_ _

__They were standing outside Sykkuno’s building later in the day after Sykkuno had told him all that happened at the supply shop. Upon hearing Corpse’s explanation, Sykkuno took a moment to process it, digging his toe into the ground absently. “Is Toast going to be okay?”_ _

__“Toast will be fine,” Corpse put a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. “You did good. I’m just… I hate that I couldn’t be there for you.”_ _

__It was the odd time of late-afternoon-early-evening, when the sky was painted a myriad of colour, and the moon was out in the sky but the street lamps hadn’t clicked on yet. The last vestiges of daylight were reflected in Sykkuno’s eyes when he looked up, and Corpse froze, captivated to the point where he didn’t know what to do or say next._ _

__“I-It’s okay, Corpse. You can’t be with me all the time.” Sykkuno’s voice stopped thickly. He looked about to say something more, but pressed his lips together and his gaze wandered to the side. When Corpse didn’t immediately respond, Sykkuno gave a shaky half-laugh, cupping it behind his hand. “A-Anyway, um…” he rocked on his heels and looked down the street, at his shoes, up at the deepening indigo sky and the half-moon standing out against it, anywhere but Corpse. Although by looking at the moon did that mean he was still kind of...? The absurdity of the question tickled him and he giggled, this time sounding and feeling more relaxed. “Anyway,” he said again, “do, do you wanna come up for a bit?”_ _

__Corpse stuffed both hands into the pockets of his hoodie. He did. He really, really did, but..._ _

__“No…” he said slowly. “Not today, uh… I’ll stop by the shop tomorrow, okay?”_ _

__“Okay…” Sykkuno agreed, careful to keep his tone neutral._ _

__They said their good-byes and Sykkuno took the elevator up to his apartment. Once inside he stooped down to pet Bimbus and exhaled in one long breath. The words unsaid were still running around in his head._ _

__“It’s okay, Corpse. You can’t be with me all the time…”_ _

__… _though I wouldn’t mind if you were.__ _


	7. vii

Toast came in from the back room with a tray of freshly made cheesecake to put in the display case and ulterior motives. He squinted around the room once, then shut the back of the case and said, “Sykkuno, go buy me a sandwich.”

Sykkuno looked over from where he was just in the process of handing Corpse a mug of tea. “What?”

Rae looked equally surprised and confused, until Toast gave her a meaningful eyebrow waggle and... _oh_. As casually as possible she chimed in, “Yeah, me too. Go get me a sandwich from Lud and Peter’s.”

“Now?”

“Now.” Toast crossed his arms.

“Get Corpse one too,” Rae added.

Corpse set his mug back down on the pick-up counter to put both hands up defensively, palms out. Whatever had sparked this, he wasn’t sure he wanted any part of it. “Nah, nah, I’m good.” He was all the more confused when Rae gave him a wide-eyed look that clearly said, _dammit, Corpse_.

Toast jerked his head to the door. “Get out of here, Sykkuno. Go on, get! I’m hungry.”

“I want a sandwich!” Rae bullied Sykkuno out from behind the counter.

“Shoo!” Toast shoved some money in his hand and pushed him at the door. “Shoo!”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.” Sykkuno sounded like a wounded puppy. “Geez… Two sandwiches, right? Be right back, I guess.”

Corpse waited until the door shut behind Sykkuno before asking, “What the…?”

“Is he gone?” Toast cut him off.

Rae darted cautiously to the door and peeked out. “Yes.” She ran back, waving Corpse over with a conspiratory grin on her face. “C’mere, Corpse.”

Sykkuno spent the entire walk to the take-out place wondering what he’d done to deserve this, and as such his, “Hi Ludwig,” came out small and mournful.

“Hey, Sykkuno. What’s the matter?”

“Oh,” Sykkuno sighed. “It’s just, Toast and Rae just practically threw me out of the shop and told me to come get them sandwiches. It was really out of nowhere and weird, and they didn’t have to be so mean about it. I was trying to think what I did wrong to make them mad at me.”

“Aw, buddy. I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong.” Ludwig leaned on the counter and gave him a sympathetic smile. Then his eyes lit up and he added, “Oh wait, I bet they’re--”

Peter came dashing out of the kitchen to shove what looked like a meatball into Ludwig’s mouth. “HeyLudwigtastethisandtellmewhatyouthink.” He ignored Ludwig’s mild huffy panic at how hot the meatball had been and addressed Sykkuno. “Don’t feel bad, I’m sure they were just hangry.”

“I guess…” Sykkuno agreed slowly.

Ludwig danced around open-mouthed and flapped his hands until the meatball was cool enough to chew safely. “Hot hot hot…” He gave Peter a thumbs up and chimed in. “Yeah, that’s right, yeah, they were probably just hangry.”

“If you guys say so. I guess that’s possible.” Sykkuno sighed. “Anyway, what’s today’s special?”

“Your choice of pastrami or meatballs with German kimchi,” Ludwig told him. “And I can attest to the excellent taste of the meatballs, as you just witnessed.”

“It did look and smell good,” Sykkuno paused. “German kimchi?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “It’s _sauerkraut_. They don’t even use the same kind of cabbage.”

“But you _could_ make sauerkraut with nappa cabbage or kimchi with a regular old head of cabbage,” Ludwig countered. “Kimchi’s made with all sorts of vegetables.”

“Yeah, that’s true, you _could_ , but…”

“Ergo, I’m right. They are the same thing.”

“You can’t call every fermented cabbage food ‘kimchi’ Ludwig. You know what, never mind!” Peter clearly had endured this argument before. “What’ll it be, Sykkuno?”

“Um, maybe one of each so they can decide or share.”

“Toasted?”

“Yeah, they both like their sandwiches toasted,” Sykkuno remembered. He and Sean had made numerous bad jokes at Toast’s expense over the years.

“Coming right up.”

Corpse was nodding along and saying, “Yes, yes, I see…” to something when Sykkuno ventured back into the shop.

“Um, I uh… I got your sandwiches?” He held them up like a peace offering. “I got one of each of the specials for you guys…”

“Thanks,” Toast took them off his hands and noted the writing on the packaging. “You want meatball or pastrami, Rae?”

“I’ll take meatball if you don’t mind.” Rae accepted her sandwich. “Thanks, Sykkuno.”

“Yeah, um… no problem…” Sykkuno still sounded unsure of where he stood with them.

“We’ve got things handled here. You can go home, Sykkuno.” Toast sat at the table he, Rae, and Corpse were occupying and began unwrapping his sandwich.

Sykkuno pulled his phone from his back pocket and looked at the time. “But, my shift is…”

“There’s like no one in here. Go home. Play with Bimbus or something.”

“Or maybe go back and get yourself a sandwich, this is really good,” Rae suggested around a mouthful of hers.

Sykkuno shifted his weight from one foot to the other restlessly. “Um…”

Corpse got to his feet, and Sykkuno could tell from the look in his eye that he was smiling underneath the mask. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

Sykkuno fidgeted. “If, if you guys are sure…”

“Totally sure,” Rae lifted her sandwich to say good-bye.

“Bye,” Toast added pointedly.

Sykkuno was so thrown off by their attitude he wore his apron home. Along the way, he only addressed it directly once, asking, “What was that all about?”

Corpse sounded thoroughly amused when he answered. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay…” Sykkuno pouted. “If you say so…” If Corpse said it was nothing to worry about, then that must be true, right?

The next two days, Sykkuno found that he had abruptly been rescheduled to different shifts from Toast and Rae, and only really saw them in passing. He kind of got the impression that they might be avoiding him but it could have just been his paranoia speaking. After that was his day off, so he stayed up the whole night playing online games and collapsed into bed around six a.m.

When he next saw the time it was two in the afternoon. He had been roused by a text message from Toast.

_We’re picking you up @ 4. See you downstairs. ___

__Who’s ‘we’? Picking him up for what? Did they have plans today he'd forgotten about? Sykkuno flopped his head back down on the pillow and curled up in the duvet like a caterpillar. His only plan had been to sleep today and he still had two hours…_ _

__But falling back asleep with this new mystery knocking around in his head proved difficult. Sykkuno flopped out of bed, dressed, made coffee and did some laundry, and alternated playing with Bimbus and pacing the apartment until four o’clock finally arrived. His phone buzzed, so he grabbed his wallet, locked the door, and took the elevator down._ _

__Toast rolled up just as he exited the building’s entrance. “Get in loser, we’re going stargazing.”_ _

__Sykkuno stopped short. “What?”_ _

__“Come on, let’s go.”_ _

__Sykkuno approached the car, and when he was close enough he could see that Toast was sharing the vehicle with Rae and… Corpse? “Um…?” was all he could manage to get out as he climbed in the back seat._ _

__“Hey,” Corpse greeted him._ _

__Rae turned around in the passenger seat and smiled excitedly. “Hi, Sykkuno. Ready to go?”_ _

__“I don’t even know where we’re going.”_ _

__No one would tell him anything about their destination during the drive. They were going stargazing? Toast didn’t even like stargazing and Rae was indulgent but would rather be doing something else. It didn’t add up. And Corpse? Corpse clearly wasn’t the instigator but he _was_ in on whatever it was. Hopefully they would explain things for him eventually because Sykkuno was really confused._ _

__They ran into rush hour traffic, so the drive outside the city took longer than usual, but considering their plans it didn’t matter much. Once they left the outskirts and made a couple of turns, Sykkuno started to get an idea for where they were going. Sure enough, Toast turned into a park attached to a nature reserve that Sykkuno had visited a number of times. There were trails that led out into the foothills, far from the lights of the parking lot and up a hill where they would have an uninterrupted view of both the city lights in the distance and the clear sky above. Come to think of it, he and Corpse had been there not too long ago, which explained how Toast and Rae knew about it._ _

__That still didn’t explain _why_ they were there, though._ _

__Toast parked the car and everyone got out. Sykkuno stretched and looked up at the sky. There wasn’t a single cloud as far as the eye could see. It was going to be a perfect night for it._ _

__The other three were busy taking things out of the trunk. When Sykkuno offered to help, Rae dumped a bundled up picnic blanket in his arms and told him to never mind the rest. Once they were all laden down with what seemed like an awful lot of stuff for just stargazing, Toast locked the car and they headed into the park._ _

__The sun was low in the horizon, painting a fantastic early summer sunset when they reached the crest of the hill and selected a spot to put down the picnic blanket. Once it was laid out and all the other packages were set in the middle, Sykkuno, Corpse, Toast, and Rae sat in a row to watch the sun go down._ _

__“Um…” Sykkuno ventured, looking around at them. “Can someone please tell me what we’re doing here now?”_ _

__“Stargazing,” Toast answered simply._ _

__“Yeah, Sykkuno, stargazing,” Rae said like it was obvious._ _

__“Like we told you,” Corpse added._ _

__Sykkuno scratched at the side of his head in confusion. “Yeah but, why?”_ _

__“Ohh, you want to know _why_ we’re here,” Toast played up faking surprise._ _

__“Pretty sure it’s clear that’s what I meant…”_ _

__Rae burst out laughing. “Ooh, Snarkkuno.”_ _

__“You want to know _why_ we’re here,” Toast repeated. “Why didn't you say so? Rae, get the wine.”_ _

__“Huh? You brought wine?” Sykkuno watched as Rae produced a bottle of red wine, four glasses, and a bottle of cola for designated-driver Toast. “Um…?”_ _

__Rae popped the cork and poured out the wine, passing glasses down for Sykkuno and Corpse before filling her own. She looked to Toast expectantly._ _

__“Okay, we all have our drinks?” Toast looked up and down at them all, then raised his glass of cola. “Then... Sykkuno, it’s a week early but, happy birthday!”_ _

__“...Huh?”_ _

__“Surprise!” Rae crowed, raising her glass, “Happy birthday!”_ _

__“...Wh-What?”_ _

__Corpse touched his glass to Sykkuno’s and quietly added his own, “Happy birthday.”_ _

__Sykkuno still needed a moment. Once it set in he began to tremble and felt the first pricklings of tears at the corners of his eyes. “Y-You guys… I, I don’t know what to say…”_ _

__“Just say thank you and drink your wine,” Rae told him. “We were going to wait until the day-of, but you looked so miserable the other day we decided to have it early instead and save your poor heart the stress.”_ _

__“I, I thought maybe you guys hated me or something…”_ _

__“Don’t be ridiculous,” Toast scoffed in good-nature._ _

__“We should eat while it’s still light out,” Rae suggested, getting up on her knees and pulling out containers from a large eco bag. Sykkuno recognized the wrappers as the ones used at Peter and Ludwig’s place. Rae laid out sandwiches, salads, fried chicken, corn bread, tortilla pizzas, and a number of other side dishes, plus a little layered cake just the right size for four people. Together they sat and chatted over food and drink as the sun went down and the first few stars began to come out. Right as it started to get really dark, they lit the candles on the cake and Sykkuno almost cried again when he blew them out._ _

__“Do you feel older yet?” Toast asked once they had packed up the leftovers and were sprawled around the blanket drinking and watching the sky._ _

__“Technically my birthday is next week, remember?”_ _

__“Yeah, but we already just had your party, so that means we aged you a whole week in advance. We shortened your life today.”_ _

__Sykkuno didn’t really follow his logic, but just the same, “Well, at least I’ll die a week earlier knowing that I have such good friends.”_ _

__Rae went “Aww…” and Corpse chuckled in that way Sykkuno recognized as meaning he’d surprised him somehow. Both reactions filled him with warm, fuzzy feelings that had nothing to do with the alcohol in his system. He took another sip of the beer he’d followed the wine with and hoped it was too dark for the others to see the smile permanently attached to his face. (It wasn’t. They could see it.)_ _

__Sometime later into the evening, Rae turned to him and asked, “Is there a bathroom near by?”_ _

__Sykkuno pointed downhill. “If you follow that trail there’s a public bathroom. Once you make it to the other side of the trees you should see the light. It’s a bit of a walk, though.”_ _

__Toast got to his feet. “I’ll go with you and make sure you’re not eaten by a mountain lion or something.”_ _

__“What a gentleman.”_ _

__“Also, I need to piss, too.” Toast retrieved the flashlight from one of the bags of stuff and said, “We’ll be right back.”_ _

__“Call us if you get lost,” Corpse told him._ _

__Sykkuno finished his beer and flopped down on his back while he considered getting another one. He looked dreamily up at the stars and murmured, “This was fun.”_ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

__“I’m glad you’re here, Corpse.”_ _

__“Me too.”_ _

__“Hey, Corpse? Can I ask you a question?”_ _

__“Yeah?”_ _

__Sykkuno sat back up because it was suddenly really important that he knew. “Where do you live?”_ _

__In the dark he could see Corpse blink in surprise. “Uh…” he said and awkwardly pointed upwards._ _

__Even sober, it would have taken Sykkuno a moment, but he still caught on. “Oh.” Of course, because… He looked up at the moon and said again, “Oh…” Then he giggled and flopped back down onto the blanket. “I guess I kind of knew that.” He listened to Corpse laugh along with him quietly and lifted one hand towards the sky. “I’m kind of jealous… it must be really nice up there. Does it look different?”_ _

__Corpse laid down next to him on his back and answered, “Yeah, it’s like, really quiet and you can just see more, as far as the moonlight reaches… but the view from down here is nice in its own way, too.”_ _

__They watched the sky in comfortable silence. Eventually Sykkuno turned his head to the side to look at Corpse and tried to imagine what it must feel like to _be_ light. Right now he looked just as human as Sykkuno was to him. The faint light from the moon and the stars overhead was outlining the fine lines of his curly hair, the bridge of his nose, and the curve of his lips over where he had his mask pulled down to his chin._ _

__“Why do you wear a mask all the time?”_ _

__“How can I explain…? I guess, I’m just scared.” Corpse considered his words carefully. “Since I’m… incomplete… I worry about… I worry that just covering my eye isn’t enough and people might notice something’s not right about me…”_ _

__“Oh…” Sykkuno absently ran his fingers over his (their?) eye. “So it’s my fault.”_ _

__Corpse rolled onto his side towards him. “It’s not your fault.”_ _

__Sykkuno rolled over too, and they stared at each other for a long time before he blurted out, “Why did your eye fall into mine anyway?”_ _

__Corpse's flustered pause gave way to a short, breathy laugh. “Aren’t you full of questions today?”_ _

__“I think it’s the alcohol, um, sorry, I… I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable...”_ _

__“No, no, I don’t mind it at all. Not from you. In fact, maybe you should drink more. Let’s see what other new sides to you we can find out...” Corpse sat up and reached for the cooler._ _

__Sykkuno giggled and joined him. He used the light from his smartphone to illuminate inside the cooler. “You think so? I mean, I won’t say no, but… What do we even have left?”_ _

__“Uh… there’s still some beer, another bottle of wine, some hard apple cider… a bottle of uh… some kind of fruity wine cooler or something. How much did Rae bring?” Corpse shifted some bottles around. “I think I see a bottle of Jack down there.”_ _

__“We could wait until Rae gets back and open the wine?” Sykkuno suggested._ _

__Rae returned at that very moment, dropping onto the blanket to throw her arms around both their shoulders with all of her weight from behind. “What’s that you just said about more wine? Ooh, we _did_ have another bottle. Give it here, I’ll open it.”_ _

__

__Rae and Sykkuno did not make it to the bottom of the bottle. Toast and Corpse packed up everything and managed to wake them just long enough to walk back to the car. More than once on the drive back to the city, Corpse couldn’t resist turning around and smiling at the image of them leaning into each other, fast asleep._ _

__Toast stopped at Sykkuno’s building first and Corpse collected Sykkuno from the back seat. Rather than try waking him again, Corpse carried Sykkuno piggyback while Toast extracted his keys._ _

__“Thanks for coming along tonight,” Toast said as he put the keys in Corpse’s hand._ _

__“Thanks for inviting me. It was fun.”_ _

__“You don’t need me to wait? I can take you home on the way to Rae’s, it’s no problem. Just let me know where to drop you off.”_ _

__“No, no, it’s fine,” Corpse assured him._ _

__“If you say so. See you later.”_ _

__“Drive safe.”_ _

__Corpse watched Toast pull away, then leaned forward and readjusted his grip on the backs of Sykkuno’s knees before heading inside. Bimbus came trotting to the door to greet them and Corpse quietly went ‘shh…’. It was a little precarious getting his boots off with Sykkuno on his back, but he managed it and crossed the darkened apartment to the bedroom._ _

__Corpse crouched down and gently eased Sykkuno off his back and onto the bed. He removed Sykkuno’s sneakers and took them back to the door. The bed was unmade with the duvet flipped over and shoved against the wall, making it easier to pull it over Sykkuno, who mumbled something incoherent and snuggled into his pillow. Corpse sleepily knelt down and took a moment to rest, not being completely sober either despite how well he kept it together. He felt comfortably tipsy, reaching over to gently brush Sykkuno’s bangs out of his eyes. It was nice that he seemed to have had a good early birthday._ _

__The sky outside the window was the dusty pale colour of pre-dawn. If he didn’t go now, he’d have to wait and hope the moon became visible sometime during the afternoon to, as Sykkuno would put it, ‘go home’. But now that he’d sat down, the inclination to move again abandoned Corpse. He folded his arms on the mattress and set his head on them, intending only to close his eyes for a moment before dropping off to sleep entirely._ _

__

__Sykkuno slowly came awake and took a moment to register where he was. That was his ceiling. This was his bed. He didn’t remember getting here, but here he was. He was also really, really warm. Like, uncomfortably warm. A quick check confirmed he was still wearing his clothes so he sat up to at least take off his hoodie and… oh._ _

__Two things became immediately apparent._ _

__1\. His head was spinning so he was clearly still a little drunk_ _

__and_ _

__2\. Corpse was asleep next to him._ _

__Well, not strictly next to him, more like next to the bed. Sykkuno carefully tipped his body sideways so he was laying with his head at the very edge of the mattress where he could get a peek at Corpse’s face. It was half buried in his arms, and his eyepatch and mask were askew. He was definitely sleeping. Interestingly, his missing right eye looked normal when it was closed except for the slightest, barely perceptible purple glow showing under his long eyelashes. Sykkuno held his breath. He shouldn’t be staring but Corpse was so beautiful he couldn’t help it…_ _

__Corpse took a deep breath in his sleep and shifted position slightly, turning his face further into his arms. Was he cold? Maybe he was cold. Sykkuno should get him a blanket._ _

__He tried sitting up again but his head was having none of it. The world was spinning and spinning and he his body felt boneless and heavy. Hm. He couldn’t go get a blanket like this. What other options did he have? They’d just have to share the duvet. Yeah, that seemed like a good idea._ _

__Sykkuno shifted onto his stomach and poked Corpse in the shoulder, whispering his name. When that didn’t work he tried to reach under his arms and coax him up onto the bed with him but Corpse was dead to the world and didn’t budge._ _

__Heh. Dead to the world. Because he’s a corpse, right?_ _

__Well, if Corpse wasn’t going to move, Sykkuno would just have to join him on the floor. He bunched the duvet up in his arms and slipped down to sit next to Corpse. With considerable effort he managed to adjust the duvet over the both of them. There, now Corpse wouldn’t be cold. Pleased with this accomplishment, Sykkuno laid his head against the mattress next to Corpse’s elbow and went back to sleep._ _


	8. viii

“I hate the word ‘mouthfeel’,” Sean announced to the room, apropos of nothing.

“Mouthfeel?” Sykkuno repeated.

“It’s just a word,” Toast smirked.

“Well, I don’t like it. It just sounds wrong. You’re not allowed to use it on the shop’s Instagram anymore.”

“Sykkuno, Rae, are you going to let him suppress our right to free speech like that?”

“Toast, this is my house and you will follow my rules.”

Sykkuno looked to Rae, who was blithely watching over Sean and Toast’s antics. “What are they talking about?”

Rae gave a dismissive handwave, moreso at the other two than at Sykkuno. “They have to amuse themselves somehow.”

“Okay…” A customer approached to distract Sykkuno anyway. He took their order and Rae filled it while Toast and Sean bickered over semantics. Mouthfeel didn’t seem like too bad of a word to Sykkuno, but maybe Sean knew something he didn’t?

They were still at it when the customer had accepted their drink and gone.

“It’s like ‘moist’, I hate that word too. ‘Moist’ is a terrible word.”

Toast was having none of it. “It’s just a _word_.” He pointed to the display case under the register. “How else am I supposed to describe that deep, rich, mouthwateringly _moist_ double chocolate cake that I made this morning?” He switched to pointing to himself for emphasis. “That I made with my own two hands.”

“I think it was the internet that ruined that one,” Rae said.

“Wait, what’s wrong with the word ‘moist’?” Sykkuno asked, confused. “Isn’t it a good thing? Like Toast said?”

“Sykkuno, you’re too sweet and innocent, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Sean told him.

“Wha…?”

At this point, Corpse entered the shop and Sean pounced on the chance to avoid responsibility when it presented itself. “Maybe Corpse can explain it for you!”

“Explain what?”

“Sykkuno doesn’t understand why people might take issue with words like ‘moist’,” Rae filled him in.

Corpse glanced at Sykkuno, then back again to Sean. “No, no, he doesn’t need to know.”

“What? Why not? I don’t… I… you can tell me. I’m not… I’m not that innocent, am I? What aren't I getting? Come on, guys?” Sykkuno fretted, which only made Corpse laugh. “What’s so funny?”

“Yeah, you’re fuckin’ hardcore,” Corpse said fondly and without conviction. “Ready to go?”

“Yup, let me just hang up my apron.” Sykkuno went to the back room.

“Where are you crazy kids off to today?” Sean asked.

Corpse shrugged, “Haven’t decided, just hanging out I guess.”

“Aw, you two are so cute.”

“Huh?” Sykkuno returned just in time to hear this.

Sean put out his hands in a sort of ‘never mind’ wave. “Go on, get out of here. And don’t learn any more bad words. Don’t you teach him any, Corpse.”

“I won’t,” Corpse said, sounding thoroughly amused.

Outside the coffee shop it was warm and sunny. Sykkuno and Corpse picked a random direction and walked, content to take their time deciding how to spend the rest of the afternoon.

They wandered around and enjoyed the weather, essentially killing time until the sun went down once they reached the decision to go stargazing. The sun was just dipping below the city skyline and the question of whether to eat dinner beforehand or take food with them for a night picnic had come up when they turned a corner and both Sykkuno and Corpse stopped short.

It was dark.

Far too dark.

Sykkuno moved closer to Corpse. Corpse stood taller, already on alert. Presently the sound of fighting up ahead reached their ears. They mutually reached the decision to check it out, approaching with caution until they rounded the next corner and found the source.

The source of the fighting involved a number of the featureless shadow figures and two others: a woman dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt with shoulder-length hair, and a man who was dressed similarly from the neck down but sported what looked like a bright pink astronaut’s helmet with a tiny snowman on top on his head. Odd choice but okay.

The woman and half-astronaut seemed to be working in tandem, cutting down shadows with ruthless efficiency.

Sykkuno shifted his weight from one leg to the other, bouncing back and forth and shooting Corpse nervous glances. “Sh-Should we go? Or help? Um… well, I- I can’t do much to help, but…”

“No, I think they’ve got it. Let’s wait here, just in case though...” Corpse said.

Sykkuno took another step closer to him for comfort and watched the battle go on. Sure enough, it wasn’t much longer until the half-astronaut cut down the last of the shadows and the light around them returned.

The woman and the half-astronaut relaxed their fighting stances, or so it seemed until they turned on each other. Before they could get too into it, though, they both noticed Corpse and Sykkuno at around the same time. Immediately they abandoned fighting each other to instead approach slowly, practically broadcasting their willing and able-ness to fight at a moment’s notice as if it wasn’t already obvious.

“Hey,” Corpse gave a short nod in greeting.

The pink astronaut helmet tilted to one side, then he relaxed his stance. “Oh. Hi, name’s 5up.”

The woman with him followed his lead. “I’m Hafu.”

“Corpse,” he returned the introduction, and Sykkuno peeked around him to also do so,

“Um, hi. I’m Sykkuno.”

Hafu looked closer at him. “Oh, are you human?”

“Uhh… yeah. That’s me. Plain old human Sykkuno. Yup,” Sykkuno bobbed his head. “Well, except for--”

“The fact that he spends time with me,” Corpse cut him off, his voice at its low-and-rumbliest that Sykkuno had heard in awhile.

Hafu looked up at him and gave an unperturbed, “Oh.” But Corpse could glean from the way she flitted brief glances between them that his too-quick excuse had piqued her curiosity. He had only delayed the inevitable.

"I see…" The same could be heard in 5up's voice.

“Um…” Sykkuno meekly asked, “You guys are…”

“Pest control,” 5up answered. “We hunt errant shadows and other bad spirits.”

“I’m the best. He’s maybe number 2.”

“Uh, excuse me. I’m the best. _You’re_ maybe number 2.”

“Not even close!”

“Sure Hafu,” 5up said with the tone of someone who didn’t agree in the slightest.

Hafu turned her blade on him. "You wanna prove it right now?"

"I could take you in a heartbeat."

They sure seemed antagonistic, but were they human or some kind of spirits themselves or…? Sykkuno worried he’d missed his window to clarify his question. “Um… But are you…?”

“Actually, running into each other here might work in our favor.” 5up said slowly. “We’re here to take down a particularly strong nest of shadows. Wouldn’t hurt to have some extra help.”

Corpse let the offer hang in the air a moment before jerking his head to Sykkuno and turning away. “Nah, I’m not about that. Come on, let’s go.”

“Okay,” Hafu said in a way that could only accurately be described as ominously casual.

When Sykkuno looked back just before he and Corpse turned the next corner, 5up and Hafu were still watching them.

Corpse was distracted all the way back to Sykkuno’s apartment, where he suggested they put off stargazing that evening just to be safe. Already kind of jumpy and eyeing the nightfall with apprehension, Sykkuno agreed. Plus Bimbus was happy to have company while they sat on the floor with their backs against Sykkuno's bed and played video games for a couple of hours.

Sometime late into the evening, Corpse knocked shoulders with Sykkuno to get his attention. “Sorry, I know you wanted to go out tonight.”

Sykkuno set down the game controller and shifted position so he was turned slightly to face Corpse. “It’s okay, Corpse,” he said honestly, “I’m just happy to spend time with you.”

Corpse stuttered and put his hand over his face, unable to look Sykkuno in the eyes.

“Why are you laughing?” Sykkuno protested. “I mean it.”

Corpse wheezed out a breathy laugh and fumbled for something to say. “Yeah, I uh, yeah, you’re… oh man.” He ventured a look and laughed again. “I uh,” nope, still too hard to look at him directly, “I like spending time with you, too.”

Sykkuno was suddenly very invested in floofing Bimbus’ head.

The game’s waiting screen music cheerfully, dissonantly punctuated the shift in mood that descended on the room.

Sykkuno fidgeted and flattened down his bangs. “Um...”

“I should go.” Corpse adjusted his mask with shaking fingers.

Sykkuno followed him to his feet. “A-Are you sure? You can stay later, if you want… You could even--” stay the night? No, he couldn’t say that, that would be weird. Even Sykkuno recognized how that would sound. But no, friends could stay the night, couldn’t they? Toast and Rae had slept over before. Corpse had just kinda-sorta accidentally slept over after Sykkuno’s birthday picnic not too long ago. So why… why did it feel different to suggest it now? “We, uh, we never finished the game.”

Corpse didn’t say anything until he’d put his shoes back on. He turned back with his hand on the door and said quietly, “No, it’s… it’s late. You should take this opportunity to catch up on sleep. I’ll… stop in at the shop tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay…” Sykkuno said for lack of anything else to say, his voice breaking slightly on the last syllable. He stood looking at the door in disappointment for a long time after Corpse let himself out. Somehow he didn’t think he’d be able to catch up on any sleep that night.

Out in the cool night air, Corpse exhaled in one long, slow breath. He’d panicked. He could admit that to himself. He’d panicked, but who could blame him? How did one respond to that? How _could_ one respond to that? Especially when sitting in the exact spot where he’d woken up to Sykkuno asleep on his shoulder after the birthday picnic...

Okay, sure, his mind could and had come up with multiple possible ways to respond, many of which made his heart race just as much as the sweet sentiment in Sykkuno’s voice.

_I’m just happy to spend time with you._

Wow. Just… it was such a Sykkuno thing to say and yet he’d been caught entirely by surprise. Maybe he should go back. Should he go back? Sykkuno had looked so disappointed when he left. Did… Did Sykkuno know what he was doing when he said stuff like that? Was he actually secretly that smooth? Corpse didn’t even care either way, it was still--

“Hey.” Someone called out in greeting, distracting him from his internal debate.

Corpse followed the voice to its source. “5up...”

The next morning, Sykkuno dragged his feet all through taking Bimbus out for his morning walk and getting ready for work. Despite his best efforts, as predicted he’d slept fitfully through the night, waking up multiple times before giving up entirely and putting on some random Twitch streamer playing online games to fill the unbearable silence. He didn’t even remember who it was or what they had been playing. Something about building a raft and avoiding sharks or something...

He was mid-yawn, scratching absently at the back of his head, and turning the last corner on the way to work when Hafu popped out of nowhere next to him. “Hey, there.”

“Wh- Oh, hi, uh…?”

“Hafu. You were Sykkuno, right?”

“Right. Hi, Hafu. Uh… what brings you here? I’m just on my work, if you want to get a coffee?”

“Oh, you work in a coffee shop? That’s interesting.”

“Yup, it’s a pretty good job… if you like coffee. Probably not as exciting as… as your job though.” He chuckled a little.

Hafu’s eyes sparkled. “You think my job is exciting?”

“Well, uh, yeah… isn’t it?”

“So you’ll help me out today?”

“Uh… what?” Sykkuno stopped walking. Where did that come from?

Hafu took two steps and turned back with a cheeky smile. “Come on, it’ll be fun. What time do you finish?”

Sykkuno stalled on answering, and was saved when someone suddenly slung their arm around his shoulders. A loud and familiar voice greeted him,

"Syyyyykuno! What's up buddy?"

“Oh, hey, Ludwig. I was just on my way to work.” Sykkuno noted the other owner of the take-out place was there. “Hi Peter.”

“Sup.”

“We were just on our way to get some pre-game coffee,” Ludwig said. “Who was that you were talking to? And uh, where’d she go?”

Come to think of it, Hafu had disappeared pretty quickly.

“That was, uh… just someone I met yesterday while out with Corpse.”

“That big scary guy you’ve been hanging out with lately?”

Sykkuno laughed. “That’s him. He’s not so scary once you get to know him, though.”

“No, I believe you, but Peter and I were just saying the other day, imagine if like, he started to rub off on you. Imagine you wearing all black and like, if you got some eyeliner to go with your colour contacts…” Ludwig rambled on while Peter added,

“You’d be Dark Sykkuno.”

“Darkkuno! Or maybe Evilkkuno!”

“Evil?!” Sykkuno laughed.

“We’ve played Mafia before; we’ve seen your secretly ruthless side,” Peter reminded him..

“Yeah, you’re like a cat. All soft and fluffy but when the claws come out, watch out!” Ludwig declared, swiping at the air to illustrate.

“You guys give me too much credit. I just, you know, got lucky in those games...”

“Sure, that’s what you _want_ us to think.”

They reached the coffee shop, where Toast and Rae were just in the process of unlocking the door. By the time they got in and set up and served Ludwig and Peter their coffees, other customers were trickling in and Hafu’s odd proposal had completely vanished from Sykkuno’s mind.

That was, until he finished his shift and walked out to find her waiting at the corner for him.

“Ready to go?” she asked lightly.

Sykkuno hesitated. Now that he was faced with the prospect of helping Hafu out with her job, whatever that meant, the realization that Corpse hadn’t stopped by the shop like he said he would blindsided him. Where was Corpse? How did he even find him if he needed him? They’d always just made plans every time they said good-bye and Corpse had always been there for them. More importantly, if Hafu’s job involved bad spirits and shadows, Sykkuno wasn’t in any way prepared to help her out comfortably. “A-Actually, I should…”

Hafu pushed off the street lamp she’d been leaning against and closed the distance between them to put a finger to his lips. “Deafen.”

Sykkuno’s voice died in his throat. He blinked in surprise, then opened his mouth again. Again, nothing came out.

“You can have your voice back when we’re done.” She hooked one arm through his and started them walking down a street that decidedly took them _away_ from the safety of Sykkuno’s apartment and the coffee shop. “Your friend tried to hide it yesterday, but I saw it clearly this morning. You have a bit of the moon in you. Do you know how useful that is?”

Wait, useful? What did that mean? Was she going to use him as bait? Or worse? Sykkuno frantically shook his head and tried to pull his arm free, but she had a surprisingly strong grip for how small she was.

“Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.”

More frantic head shaking. It made so much sense now why Corpse had prevented him from telling them outright about the whole eye-sharing thing. What was it he’d said when they first met? Other not-so-nice people might try to steal it from him? But Sykkuno would die. Corpse said he would protect him but he wasn’t there. Sykkuno had to find a way out of this himself, voice or no voice.

After walking for some time, they turned down a deserted side-street and discovered 5up standing under a metal staircase attached to the back of what looked like a cheap motel. He had just raised one hand in greeting when Hafu let go of Sykkuno’s arm, took two running steps, and sliced 5up in half with a blade she’d pulled out of nowhere.

_WHAT?!_ This was Sykkuno’s chance to run but he was rooted to the spot in shock. Weren’t… Weren’t Hafu and 5up partners?!

The two 5up halves faded to black smoke before they hit the ground.

“Oh,” Hafu said, in what could just barely be called mild surprise, “it was an imposter.”

“Do you _mind?!_ ” 5up (wait, what?!) dropped down from higher up on the metal staircase and stood over Hafu accusingly. “Do you know how long it took me to convince that shadow to cooperate?”

“I brought something better anyway.” She skipped back to grab Sykkuno by the arm again.

Sykkuno was shaking all over. If he understood what 5up said right, they used shadows to make imposters of themselves to use as bait? They were crazy! He could still remember being invaded by the shadow in nauseating detail, and the thought of anyone putting themselves through that willingly seemed far beyond the scope of reason. He had to get away from them. If they were so easily prepared to do that to themselves, what would they do to him?!

A thought occurred to him and he glanced at Hafu with a sense of foreboding.

What guarantee did he have that the Hafu with him wasn’t also an imposter?

But he still didn’t have his voice back. Whatever Hafu had done to him, he could assume that it was a skill unique to her, right? So it was safe to say that this was probably the real Hafu. Maybe. He had no idea. How had she even done that? Would the real Hafu have just attacked 5up like that without making sure it wasn’t the real 5up? He didn’t seem very surprised, almost like it happened all the time or something.

5up looked Sykkuno over and relented, “Okay. That might be trouble for us later though, just saying.”

“Nah, it’ll be fine.”


	9. ix

Sykkuno was given no choice but to accompany Hafu and 5up on an uber ride out to what appeared to be an abandoned facility of some sort. (Scary supernatural bounty hunter-types took ubers, who knew?) There was a chain link fence marked with numerous ‘no trespassing’ signs posted along it. The sign next to the gate was so obscured with graffiti it was nigh impossible to make out anything other than what could safely be assumed was the tail end of the word ‘laboratories’. It was late enough in the day that the non-sentient but still kind of scary shadows were long and low on the ground.

“My intel says that the nest of shadows we’re after have taken up residence deep within this place and have been terrorizing the construction workers renovating it,” 5up said in a low voice.

Sykkuno was sweating and actively fighting the urge to run for his life. He sold coffee for a living. He couldn’t help them with anything. Right? They should, they should just give him back his voice and let him go. Right? He tried to communicate this through pleading glances. Right, guys?

If 5up noticed, he ignored him to continue explaining, “What we need to do is find where they’re most concentrated, identify the leader, and take them out along with as many as we can, preferably all of them.”

Around the time they pushed their way through a gap in the fence and crossed the cracked pavement of the parking lot to enter the musty-smelling and shadowy front entrance, Sykkuno was forced to accept that silent pleading for mercy wasn’t working. Time to think of a new plan.

While he wracked his brain, 5up and Hafu paused at a map of the facility posted behind the front desk to confer. Whatever this place was, it consisted of the main single-storey building they were in, which branched off and was connected to two other larger buildings behind it, forming a triangle with a courtyard in the middle plus a few other smaller buildings, some of which were labeled as greenhouses, in back. It looked huge.

“Let’s start with this building and make our way around.” Hafu traced a path around the map. “We should split up.”

“All three of us?” 5up tilted his head to indicate Sykkuno.

Sykkuno looked between them in a panic. Split up? Were they crazy?! He flapped his hands and shook his head so vehemently he made himself dizzy.

Hafu rocked on her heels. “Yup. Any one of us will be an attractive target.”

“That’s true,” 5up agreed. He pointed to the bright red fire alarm switch on the wall. “That’s still connected, I checked. I cut the line going out to the fire department, so we’ll be the only ones to hear it. If you see anything suspicious run back here and hit it.”

What the heck kind of plan was that?!

5up next pointed down one of the many halls branching off from the entrance area. “I’ll go this way.” He looked at Sykkuno again. “Give him his voice back, at least.”

She shrugged and snapped her fingers.

Sykkuno felt a lump like he had to clear his throat, and when he did he was filled with relief to hear it made a sound. “Guys, this doesn’t seem like a very good plan…”

“It’ll be fine, Sykkuno. I’ve never lost a game.”

A game? This was a game to her?! Oh jesus, he was a goner.

“Um…” Sykkuno stalled, trying to think of something. He pointed at the door they’d just come through. It was worth a shot, right? “Okay, I’ll just go this way.”

“You’re free to go, but remember, I know where you work now.”

Sykkuno laughed nervously and swung his finger towards a different door. “Oh, sorry, I-I meant this way.”

The three of them parted ways. Sykkuno wrapped his arms around himself and went slowly. What was he even supposed to be doing? There were supposed to be powerful imposters and lots of scary shadow people around here. 5up had called it a nest. They made nests? What was that old adage about kicking hornets’ nests? Not a good idea. If you asked him, they should be going in the opposite direction. But seriously, what was Sykkuno even supposed to do if he found it? They could have at least given him a weapon or something to defend himself with…

The corridor he’d randomly selected was on the perimeter of the building and lined with windows, which meant it got all the light from outside. A good number of the windows were broken and the wind coming in made odd sounds here and there. Sykkuno peeked in a few open doors to see first offices and meeting rooms, then around the corner at the end he began passing some small laboratories with sinks and shelves and a lot of broken glass on the floor. It was starting to get darker, and every little sound he heard gave him goosebumps and made him progressively more jumpy.

How was he going to get out of this situation? Sykkuno sure didn’t like the idea of being used as bait. So far he’d gotten off easily but as soon as he came across a shadow creature and they realized he had what for all intents and purposes was a big target on his face, things were going to get very dangerous for him very fast.

Why hadn’t Corpse come to see him at the shop like he said he would?

Did something happen?

Was Corpse okay?

Suddenly the alarm sounded and Sykkuno nearly fell to the ground in fright. He spun around, slip-sliding on a piece of broken glass, it really was everywhere, and ran as fast as he could back to the front entrance. When he arrived, 5up was standing at the alarm.

“I made it to the end of my corridor and back. See anything?”

Sykkuno shook his head, no. “Where’s Hafu?”

“Right here.” She emerged from another corridor and leaned against the door with her arms crossed. “Sorry, I found the electrical mainframe and was trying to see about turning on lights.”

Sykkuno glanced up at the dark ceiling. “Do they have power here?”

“The alarm just went off, didn’t it?”

Good point. Something seemed off though. How could Sykkuno be sure that either of the 5up and Hafu before him were the real 5up and/or Hafu? “You guys really want to just walk around until you run into a shadow person like this?” It didn’t seem like an effective strategy from the people who had introduced themselves as the best.

“We’ve been doing this long enough,” 5up told him darkly, “we know that the best strategy is to make them come to us.”

Sykkuno’s reflection in the visor of his astronaut helmet didn’t look convinced.

“Another round?” Hafu suggested.

Wait. Something definitely seemed different. Sykkuno was so distracted trying to figure out what was poking him in the back of his mind that he almost missed when 5up and Hafu called the meeting to an end. 5up went down a different corridor and Hafu went back the way she’d just come from. Sykkuno sighed, crossed his arms to keep pondering, and picked a door to go through.

He’d only just met 5up and Hafu and knew next to nothing about them, so whatever seemed different had to be something really obvious and superficial. They looked the same, so far as he knew anyway on 5up’s part. They looked and sounded the same, but if they were imposters, of course they would.

By the time Sykkuno reached the end of the corridor and was presented with the option of going left or right or turning back, he had come to what he felt pretty sure was the answer. The question now was how to make sure. As he stood in the junction going over his theory, he sensed movement down towards the right. Not wanting to hang around and be in danger any longer, it spurred him towards making a decision, and he ran back to the entrance. Sykkuno hit the emergency alarm and spent the time until 5up and Hafu reappeared going over and over the plan in his mind and making double sure of his logic.

“What is it?” Hafu asked.

“Yeah, what is it, Sykkuno?”

“Well, I thought I saw something,” Sykkuno explained. He scratched his head and tried to recall what he’d seen in the right corridor, “it kinda looked green though, so it couldn’t have been a shadow… don’t know… what it could have been…” Maybe he should have gone to check it out. Too late now. “But actually, I had a question. If we keep splitting up like this, how can we be sure it’s the real Hafu and 5up coming back each time? I might even be an imposter.” Funny, this was actually the second time in recent memory he’d thrown suspicion on himself to steer a conversation in the direction he wanted it to go.

Hafu narrowed her eyes at him. “You think one of us is an imposter?”

“I know who I think _could_ be an imposter,” Sykkuno answered without answering. “I wanna know what you think.”

“I don’t think any of us are suspicious.”

“Yeah,” 5up agreed, “I think we’re all safe.”

Sykkuno nodded slowly. “Just like an imposter would say.”

“Now, hold on--” 5up started to protest.

“Are you an imposter?” Hafu turned to face him.

“What? No!”

“But how do we know, 5up? How do we know?” Sykkuno asked.

“You think I’m suspicious, Sykkuno?”

“I think we’re all suspicious.” Sykkuno answered honestly. He left out who he thought was most suspicious, because he needed to take a risk to be sure. It was still mostly fifty-fifty.

“Wait, how am I suspicious?” Hafu demanded.

5up crossed his arms. “I suppose Sykkuno does have a point…”

“No way!” Hafu protested. “You two, maybe, but I’ve been trying to get the lights back on to give us the advantage. I’m the least suspicious person here!”

Sykkuno thought fast. “Then, why don’t we go fix the lights together?”

Hafu crossed her arms. “Fine. We’ll go fix the lights, 5up can keep looking for the nest.”

Sykkuno’s heart was beating furiously but he somehow managed to keep his voice level. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

So far so good. Now for the tricky part of Sykkuno’s plan. They split up again, this time with Sykkuno following Hafu to the electrical mainframe while 5up went off on his own.

The electrical room was a mess. It looked like scrappers had gotten to it, with numerous panels torn out and multiple wires left hanging. How Hafu expected to get the lights working again was beyond what Sykkuno could fathom. That said, she led him to a panel near the back that was marked ‘lights’ and seemed actually mostly intact, saying, “It should be a combination of these switches.”

This far back in the room seemed awfully dark, though…

“Well…” Sykkuno’s voice shook slightly and he swallowed to steady himself. “What have you tried so far?”

He had made sure to always keep Hafu in his peripheral vision, and good thing too, because he had barely reached for the switches when he spied movement and only narrowly managed to dodge out of the way. She took another broad swipe at him and, well, there went any hope of getting the lights back on. Sykkuno ran blindly to the side, smacked into another electric panel, bounced off it and went down on his knees, sending broken glass and dropped switches and wires scattering across the floor. He scrambled back to his feet and ran around the perimeter of the room to keep distance between him and Hafu. He reached the door and had taken one step into the hall when he ran, literally, into 5up.

“5up, stop him, he’s an imposter!” Hafu declared, pointing towards Sykkuno with her blade.

“No, no, you gotta believe me, 5up! It’s not me!”

5up pushed Sykkuno away and took a step back. “I don’t know, you did say back there that you _could_ be one. This could be a trap.”

“That’s true, I could be.”

“What are you getting at, Sykkuno? Stop playing around!”

“We should kill him anyway. If he’s an impostor we win, if he’s not, we can take that bit of the moon for ourselves,” Hafu reasoned.

“Whoa, wouldn’t that be bad?” 5up waved his hands at her in protest. “What if his friend comes after us?”

“Yeah,” Sykkuno added, his mind just barely keeping up with his mouth. Could he pull it off or would it be too obvious? He was so uncertain, but if he was right and the timeline fit, they would definitely fall for it. “What if I’m just trying to trick you and, and I’m not the imposter? If you kill me, I don’t... I don’t think my friend Toast would like that.”

“Like he said, Hafu, that Toast guy wouldn’t like it if we actually hurt him,” 5up agreed.

This was the a-ha moment Sykkuno needed. “The friend you guys met wasn’t Toast! Hafu, 5up is the imposter!”

“Wait, I misheard you!” 5up cried.

“Too bad,” Hafu declared and sliced him in half before he could defend himself. For the second time that day, Sykkuno watched as two 5up halves disappeared in smoke.

“O-Okay…” Sykkuno swallowed hard and desperately hoped the rest of his plan went as smoothly. “Can we… can we go now?” 

Hafu looked up and down the corridor. “The real 5up should be somewhere still.”

“Let’s go back to the entrance and see if he comes when we hit the alarm again.”

“Good idea…”

Sykkuno led the way and stopped at the middle of the entranceway, facing the door to the outside with his back to Hafu. “Sorry, Hafu…” he said, taking a deep breath to steady himself. He had already accidentally cut himself on the glass he picked up during his fall in the electrical room, and so his grip on it was slippery, but it was his only hope. He looked back over his shoulder and informed her, “There’s actually still another imposter here…”

As if on cue, there was a sharp whistle-swish, and Hafu’s eyes opened wide in surprise even as she faded to inky smoke and disappeared.

Sykkuno dropped the glass and raised his voice in surprise, not even really understanding what had happened until he saw the jet-black scythe and who was holding it. “Corpse!”

Corpse stalked over to him and asked, “Are you all right?”

“They were…” At the sight of him, Sykkuno was already coming crashing down from his adrenaline high and shaking all over. His shoulders heaved as a sob welled up before he could try to keep a brave face on. “They were both imposters, Corpse! They were both imposters but I… I tricked them. I tricked them both… and...”

Corpse put his free arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. “You did. I’m proud of you.”

“Wh-What are you doing here, though? How…?”

“I got talked into coming by 5up, the real one, we meant to be finished by the time your shift ended but it took more time than expected. Then we ran into Hafu and realized that the 5up you came with was an imposter once they stopped fighting and we got our stories straight.”

“I’m glad you came because I don’t know if I could have won against Hafu, imposter or not.”

“Jesus, Sykkuno, your hand is bleeding.”

Sykkuno wiped his face with his sleeve and swallowed thickly in an attempt to regain composure. “Yeah, I was going to use this piece of glass to defend myself and that kind of backfired.”

Corpse frowned at this. He squeezed Sykkuno closer. “I’m sorry, Sykkuno. I’m so, so sorry.”

Sykkuno wasn’t exactly sure what he was apologizing for. He brought up his not-bleeding hand to pat Corpse’s back awkwardly. “Y-You… you didn’t do anything wrong?” Corpse held him even tighter and didn’t respond. It almost hurt but not in a way that Sykkuno particularly minded. He felt grounded by it. “I… I’m, well, maybe not fine but… fine? Does that make sense?” He could hear the tears still in his voice and swallowed, pressing his face into Corpse’s shoulder. “I’ll… I-I’ll be fine.”

Corpse exhaled in a discontented huff against Sykkuno’s hair just above his ear. “Let’s find 5up and Hafu and get out of here.”

Corpse led the way down one of the corridors 5up had previously taken. It took them to a covered walkway connecting the main building to another, bigger one filled with laboratories. The corridors here had higher ceilings and were lined with pipes marked with all sorts of sciency-looking stuff Sykkuno didn’t really understand and lots of graffiti. Just how big was this place? He tried to remember the map back at the entranceway but exhaustion was setting in and he couldn’t conjure up a clear image…

They found 5up and Hafu through a massive, thick door leading to a large room with a very high ceiling, what looked like a pair of immense turbines or motors or something in the center, and lots of walkways and metal staircases criss-crossing in all sorts of directions connecting large vats and banks of electric panels and desks with monitors. It was dark and echoey and if the creepy shadow creatures were going to build a ‘nest’ this sure seemed like the right place for it.

5up and Hafu could be seen one level and three levels up respectively, battling against the black-on-blackness Sykkuno recognized as the shadow creatures. Corpse left him at the door to join them, looking intimidating in the dark with his fitted-mask and scythe, the purple glow from his right eye fading upwards and casting odd, shifting shapes over his features.

It was Sykkuno’s first time really seeing Corpse let loose in a fight. Without his primary concern being keeping Sykkuno out of harm’s way, his motions were fluid and quick, and slightly looser than, for example, Hafu’s tight and calculated attacks. He held the scythe two-handed with the blade parallel to the ground, his right hand higher on the staff to guide it in great sweeping arcs to mow down shadows and fill the air with furls of smoke as they were defeated.

Sykkuno’s hand throbbed and he wrapped the other around his palm tightly to try and stop the bleeding. He must have spaced out for a moment, because before he realized it the battle was over and Corpse was by his side saying something about a hospital.

“We’re done here anyway, I think.” Hafu agreed. When Sykkuno opened his eyes, she and 5up looked beat up but pleased with themselves. 5up had even lifted the visor on his helmet to reveal expressive and sympathetic dark eyes. “Sorry about all that, Sykkuno.”

“I tried to talk her out of bringing you here,” 5up punched her in the arm for emphasis.

“I thought it was a good plan.” Hafu punched him back. “What happened after we split up, anyway?”

Sykkuno explained, and once she had the whole story, all Hafu wanted to know was, “How did you know that the second 5up was also an imposter?”

“Actually, I suspected the Hafu imposter first,” Sykkuno told her.

“Oh?” She leaned forward, keen to hear more.

“How?” 5up asked.

“Well, after the first time we split up, she stopped attacking 5up on sight and they both seemed more cooperative with each other. So I thought maybe that meant one of them were imposters, or they were both imposters working together.” Sykkuno leaned against the wall and struggled to find the words for his hazy, undefined other theory, “I also realized they didn’t use names until someone else said them.”

The other three all looked surprised and Hafu said, “You noticed that?”

“I’m impressed… Wait.” 5up stopped and looked down at Hafu accusingly. “Did you attack me on sight again?”

“It wasn’t a very good imposter of you if he couldn’t defend himself,” Hafu sniffed.

“Unbelievable! You gotta stop doing that.”

Corpse disappeared his scythe and sounded very, very tired when he asked, “Can we just… can we just leave now?”

Sykkuno and Corpse waited until the night before his next day off to make up their missed stargazing trip. They drove out to a spot not far from where the birthday picnic had been and found a comfortable patch of grass to sit back and watch the stars. It was supposed to be a good night for seeing Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the sky, so Sykkuno had brought binoculars and was fiddling with a star chart app on his phone.

“We could even stay here real late and wait to see Venus before sunrise,” Sykkuno absently tapped around, talking more to himself than to Corpse.

“If you’re not too tired.”

“Rae made me a double espresso with this new cinnamon syrup we got at the end of my shift, so I should be good.” Sykkuno paused and looked up at Corpse. “Unless you’re tired.”

“Nah, you know I’m nocturnal.”

“Oh, right.” Sykkuno went ‘hm’ as something occurred to him. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“It’s just, I never did find out… um, were 5up and Hafu star spirits like, like Brooke, or...?”

Corpse waited, watching Sykkuno’s face for a beat before answering. It was the first time he’d brought it up since getting his hand stitched and begging Corpse to keep what really happened from Toast and Rae. “5up is a star spirit, yeah, but no one really knows about Hafu.”

“Really?”

“She’s really, really good at what she does. But… you’ve seen with me and 5up, we wear masks when we fight.”

Come to think of it... “Is that what the astronaut helmet was for?” He listened to Corpse affirm this and thought on it. “So Brooke has a mask too?”

“Yeah, you just never saw it that night at the shop.”

This was true. Sykkuno hadn’t personally witnessed Brooke ‘taking care’ of either of the two shadow creatures that night. “But Hafu didn’t have a mask.”

“Exactly, so she must be something else. Some people believe she’s a human who got so powerful she became a spirit herself.”

“Wow, that can happen?”

“I have no idea.” Corpse leaned back and gazed upwards. “Anything’s possible, I guess?”

“I guess…” Sykkuno put the binoculars to his eyes, then offered them to Corpse. “You wanna try?”

“Sure.” Corpse took the binoculars from him, and in the process his fingers brushed the gauze still wrapped around Sykkuno’s injured hand. “Okay, now I have a question.”

Sykkuno looked curious. “You can ask me anything.”

“Were you really going to fight Hafu’s imposter with just a piece of glass?”

Sykkuno looked at his hand and pursed his lips, lifting one shoulder in a sort of ‘why not?’ gesture as he said, “I had to use something.”

“That’s badass.”

“Wh-What?” Even in the dark Corpse could see Sykkuno blush.

“Bad. Ass.”

Sykkuno gave an embarrassed laugh and played with his bangs. “N-No, I’m, I’m really not… I, uh…”

“No, you really are,” Corpse kept on it. Sykkuno was adorable when he squirmed. Without thinking he added, “I’m kinda, I’m kinda into it.”

“Pff,” Sykkuno covered his face with his hands and nearly pitched forward onto the grass at this. “Wh-- I-Into it, what do you mean, into it?”

Put on the spot, Corpse realized what he’d said and the embarrassment suddenly became infectious. He laughed and busied himself with the binoculars. “Uh, you know… just, uh…”

They mutually agreed to change the topic after that.


	10. x

It was a lazy summer afternoon, and everyone was hanging around in the cafe enjoying the air conditioning. Toast and Poki were working while Sykkuno and Rae were chilling out sharing a table with Corpse and Brooke before their shift started. Sean had come and gone, and there were a number of customers scattered around chatting or working on laptops or tablets.

The door jangled to announce the entrance of a woman holding a bundle of papers and wearing an apron over her jeans decorated with paw prints. She approached the counter and greeted Toast with a smile. “Hi, is the manager in?”

“The owner’s out at the moment but I’m kind of like the manager,” Toast answered.

Sykkuno, Rae, and Poki exchanged evil grins. It had never really been officially decided per-say but now that he’d said it...

The woman shifted her armload of papers and stuck out her hand. “Okay, I’m Tina. I just opened a cat cafe in the area.”

“Hi Tina, everyone calls me Toast.”

“Nice to meet you, Toast. Do you mind if I leave some fliers for my cafe here? I can take any you have to do some kind of, what do you call it, mutual advertising?”

“We don’t have any fliers, I don’t think…” Toast looked to the others for confirmation and everyone shook their heads ‘no’. He shrugged, “But I don’t see why you can’t leave some here.”

“Cool. Here you go.” Tina handed him some.

“A cat cafe, huh?” Sykkuno took one and looked at it curiously.

“What’s a cat cafe?” Corpse asked.

“Um…” Sykkuno started to explain, only to be interrupted by Toast,

“It’s a cafe where you eat cats.”

“Nooo!” Poki cried.

Rae got up from her seat to threaten him with violence. “It is _not_!”

“Wha…?”

“Don’t listen to him, Corpse.”

“You’re awful, Toast,” Brooke laughed.

“Um…” Tina looked around, confused, then picked up explaining where Sykkuno left off, “It’s just like a regular cafe except there are cats hanging around that you can pet and play with.”

“...What?!”

“Yeah, see?” Sykkuno handed him the flier and pointed at the little profile photos printed in a row at the bottom. “I guess these cats.” He saw the enraptured look on Corpse’s face and laughed. “Corpse, do, do you like cats?”

“I fucking love cats,” Corpse said with breathless enthusiasm that many people present were seeing for the first time. “Do you have one of those, like, hairless cats?”

“We do, actually,” Tina answered.

“Omigod…”

Sykkuno peeked again at the joy in Corpse’s face and hid a smile behind his hand. “I guess we have to go check it out, huh?”

“Are you open today?” Brooke asked.

Tina put her hands together and apologized, “No, sorry. My partner and I are both out distributing fliers today, and then we’re closed over the weekend to install double doors that’ll hopefully keep the cats from escaping every time a customer comes in. We’ll be open next Monday, though.”

Brooke exchanged nods with Sykkuno. “We’ll be there.”

Later in the evening, when they were closing out the register and cleaning up for the night, Rae caught Sykkuno grinning to himself. She leaned on her elbows and gave him a knowing look.

“Who would have thought Corpse was such a cat lover?”

Sykkuno’s smile faltered but didn’t entirely disappear. “Wha?”

“You know, earlier today. It was cute how excited he got compared to how he usually is.”

“I think he’s just gotten more comfortable around you guys,” he explained, sounding pleased.

“Maybe…” Actually that did (also) seem true. Rae pushed off the counter and turned to the back room. “Ready to go?”

“Yup!”

Rae reached up and ruffled Sykkuno’s hair when he joined her to hang up his apron.

“What was that for?” He frowned and combed it back into place with his fingers.

“Corpse wasn’t the only cute one today,” Rae teased him.

“Wh-What? What do you mean?”

“As if you don’t know!”

“I-I don’t! I don’t know, Rae, you have to tell me! Um…”

“The way you were _looking_ at him today…”

“Wait, me? Looking at who? What are you talking about Rae…? I don’t...”

He pestered her all the way out the shop but she never gave him a straight answer. Instead, just as they were parting ways, she put her hand on her hip and rattled the keys in his direction. “I see you, Sykkuno. You’re not dumb. If you stopped and really thought about it, you’d know exactly what I mean, but you don’t want to.”

“Huh?”

Rae’s phone blipped and she checked the display. “There’s my uber.” She rattled the keys at Sykkuno again and repeated, “Think about it. You know what I mean. See you tomorrow!”

“I don’t, actually…” He said shakily but waved as she got into the uber and it pulled away. “Bye, Rae…”

He went over what she’d said the entire walk home, trying to puzzle it out. The way he was looking at… well, going by the conversation that had come before that, she must have meant Corpse, right? So Rae thought Sykkuno had looked cute... from how he was looking at Corpse? How had he been looking at Corpse? Corpse being excited over the cat cafe had been really sweet and it made Sykkuno happy, because Sykkuno was happy when his friends were happy. That’s what friends did, right? They were happy when their friends were happy. Right? Rae probably just meant they were cute together as friends, yeah…

Right?

His mind went through this unending cycle all the way home, where he stooped down and scratched Bimbus behind his ears. “What do you think, Bimb?”

Bimbus was a simple dog. He thought it was time for walkies and treats.

Monday came around and Sykkuno had the early shift, so they made plans to visit the cat cafe after he was finished. Corpse was on his way to relax with a cup of tea while he waited when Brooke ambushed him.

“Hey, Corpse.”

“Hey, Brooke. You wanna wait for Sykkuno with me?”

“I do…” she let the words hang in the air playfully, “but…”

Corpse paused, suspicious but he still took the bait, “But what?”

She grabbed him by the arm and started leading him back up the street. “Come with me, Corpse.” Her voice was full of giddy mischief, which never bode well. 

He pulled back to try and slow them down and squinted at her suspiciously. “Sykkuno’s gonna be waiting for us…”

But she was way ahead of him. “I already told him to meet us there. Come on. Let’s have a talk, y’know, a little… a little girls’ talk, just you’n me, okay?”

“But I’m…”

“You know what I mean!”

“I… actually don’t?”

“Hey, check it out, let’s get boba tea.” Brooke ignored him and crossed the street to a little stand selling boba tea and ice cream. She bullied Corpse into ordering something with her, and they sat on the bench set outside to drink. Brooke swirled her milk tea around with the straw and looked over at Corpse. “Alright, I have just one question for you. Just you and me, no Sykkuno or any of the others around so you have to answer honestly...”

“Okay…” Corpse was cautious but listened.

“Any ideas yet on how to get your eye back?”

Corpse couldn’t decide whether the question was expected or not. But he did recognize it was one he’d been subconsciously hoping no one asked. He traced patterns in the perspiration already forming on the outside of his cup in the summer heat with his thumb. “No…”

“Have you even tried finding a way?”

“You lied, that’s two questions.”

“And that might as well be my answer,” she accused him. “I heard about the Hafu/5up incident.” When he avoided her gaze again she continued, “People are starting to talk. They won’t be the last, you know. Are you really going to just hang around and be his scary shinigami bodyguard for…” she broke off, biting her lip to keep the rest of the sentence from spilling out. Corpse knew what she meant anyway.

“Maybe I will.” The statement was one part fearsome intent and one part childish defiance in a way that only Corpse could pull off.

“Okay…” she relented. “But in that case I just have one more thing to say.”

“Is it really just one thing this time?”

“Don’t be a petty bitch.” She waggled her drink at him in warning. “All I’m saying is, Sykkuno really should have a say in this.” That stung. It was true. “You have to tell him. Not just about you putting off looking for a solution, but _why_ you’ve been putting it off, too.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘why’?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You know why.”

There was no fooling her. Corpse hummed and sipped his boba tea. She had a point. He’d been taking advantage of Sykkuno’s easygoing nature, really, and that wasn’t fair. Not only that, but it was irresponsible. He knew that, deep down, but there was also a very big reason for it; one that Corpse hadn’t quite allowed himself to come to terms yet. But he had to do it. He couldn’t avoid it forever, despite how tempting it was to try.

Brooke changed the subject and they talked about other things until it was time to meet Sykkuno. The cat cafe was only a short walk away, and easily identified by the paw-print decorations and the sign on the door with a sad kitty face saying ‘don’t let me-owt’. Tina greeted them as they entered.

“Hey guys, thanks for coming. Your friend just got here a few minutes ago.” She pointed across the room, where Sykkuno was sitting on a bench that ran all the way around three-fourths of the room. “Go and sit down and I’ll come explain the system and bring you a menu.”

Sykkuno had picked up one of the cat toys scattered around the room, a little toy mouse at the end of a string, and was dangling it in front of a very interested fluffy black kitten. A large tabby laying on the shelf behind him was also watching with great interest. When it leaned forward its whiskers tickled his ear and Sykkuno giggled. It was then he noticed Corpse and Brooke had arrived and if the cat wasn’t so cute Corpse might have cursed it because he wanted to keep watching.

“Hey guys.”

“Hi, Sykkuno. You’re here early.” Brooke took the window seat so Corpse could sit next to the shelves and the cats lazing about therein.

“Yeah, Rae said I could leave a few minutes early.”

Tina walked up to them with a laminated menu under her elbow and a little pinkish-white sphynx cat in her arms. “Here,” she said, and carefully deposited the cat on Corpse’s lap. “I remember you asked about hairless cats. This is Bingus.”

Corpse had frozen with his hands raised at shoulder-level and a wide-eyed look of wonderment on his face. “Omigod. What do I do? What do I do?”

“You pet him, silly.” Tina said with a lopsided grin. “He’s pretty happy as long as he’s warm.”

“Omigod…” Corpse tentatively pet the cat behind the ears and promptly melted. “Feel this Sykkuno, he’s so soft…”

Sykkuno had been watching Corpse’s reactions to the cat with his fingers cupped over a fond smile. “Really?” he asked, and reached over to pet Bingus too. The cat felt like soft suede left out in the sun. “Oh, wow, yeah…”

Tina explained the cafe system; they had a time limit of 90 minutes, petting the cats was okay, having them on you was okay if the cat came of its own volition, but no picking them up or caging the cats in. “Cats gonna cat. Let them be free.” There was a flat rate for 90 minutes that came with a drink, and they could pay extra for more drinks or more time or to buy kitty treats. There were also blankets they could use if they didn’t want cat hair on their clothes and Tina or her co-owner Ash would be around if they had any questions. All that explained, Tina took their orders and disappeared into the back area.

While they waited, Brooke asked, “Hey Sykkuno, is Bimbus going to be jealous when you go home smelling like cats?”

“Oh probably, anytime I visit Rae’s place and come back smelling like her dog he sniffs all my clothes for a really long time then goes to sulk in the kitchen. Might be different for cats though...”

Brooke laughed. “Maybe…”

Sykkuno glanced at Corpse, who was carefully stroking the cat in his lap. It was a fairly small cat, and looked all the more tiny under Corpse’s broad hands. “Having a good time, Corpse?”

“I may never move from this spot ever again.”

Tina brought their drinks and also some cat treats they’d ordered. Cats wandered in and out between their little trio and the other customers. When their 90 minutes were up, Brooke got up to leave, but Corpse and Sykkuno elected to stay another half hour. On her way out, Brooke patted Corpse on the shoulder and gave him a meaningful look.

One of the cats had taken interest in Sykkuno’s shoelaces, so when Corpse turned back from his stare-down with Brooke, it was to the sight of Sykkuno leaning forward slightly in his seat, a small unhidden smile on his lips while he twitched his foot back and forth to make his laces jump. The cat watched, wide-eyed and jerking its head back and forth in time to Sykkuno’s movements before finally giving in to its urges and pouncing. Sykkuno burst out in delighted laughter and looked up to make sure that Corpse had seen, and the whole situation was so cute he could just die.

At the end of their extra 30 minutes, Tina saw them out with a fluffy white persian in her arms. “Come back any time,” she said warmly, making the cat wave to them.

“I definitely will,” Corpse said readily.

“I’m pretty sure he’s going to be your number one customer,” Sykkuno added.

“He’ll be king of the cats,” Tina happily played along. “See you later, your highness.”

Out in the street, Corpse offered, “I’ll walk you home.”

“Sure.” As they walked, Sykkuno’s mind wandered while he tried to think of an excuse to extend their time together. It still felt kind of early, but also too late to really go anywhere except… except home, right? For lack of anything better to say, Sykkuno observed, “Oh, hey, it’s a full moon tonight.”

Corpse looked up too. “Yeah…”

“Remember, it was a full moon the night we first met?”

“It was…”

Sykkuno absently put his hands together and ran his thumb over the palm of the hand he’d injured recently. The stitches had come out and it was mostly healed, but there was still a pink line across his palm that would probably leave a scar. Corpse watched this and all the warm fuzzy cat thoughts were pushed aside for space to recall his earlier conversation with Brooke.

“Do you--” his throat constricted and he couldn’t finish the question.

“Hm?” Sykkuno looked up at him and dropped his hands… his hands that would never have been cut and scraped and bruised over the past few months if not for Corpse entering his life. 

The sight of that scar was always going to remind Corpse of Sykkuno sobbing into his shoulder, bleeding onto the floor, feeling so small and vulnerable despite his uncanny ability to have just conned (the imposters of) two professional shadow-hunters.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t ask, he was too afraid of the answer.

Sykkuno stopped walking. “What is it?” He watched his face closely for a moment, then pressed his lips together and gave a little nod. “Or, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me, Corpse, if it’s difficult--”

“No.” Corpse said, the word coming out more sharp than he intended. He made a partially successful attempt at evening his tone. “No, it’s not okay. Don’t, don’t say it’s okay when it isn’t.”

“O-Okay…” Sykkuno looked surprised. He waited patiently for Corpse to go on. In the moment that kindness only made Corpse feel worse.

He couldn’t meet Sykkuno’s eyes, so he stared at the ground as he forced the words out into the air, “Do you regret that night?”

The silence that followed was heavy. It wrapped around him and constricted his breathing even more than the all-encompassing guilt that had prompted the question. When Sykkuno finally spoke an eternity later, it was a quiet, confused-sounding, “What…?” that he couldn’t read the emotion behind.

He needed to look at him. He needed to face up to it just like Brooke said. He tried, but his vision swam, veering over and up in his cowardice and that was when he noticed…

The moon was gone. The light of the street lamps was gone. They had just turned into the more residential area on the way to Sykkuno’s apartment but the storefront lights behind them were gone. You had to give the shadows credit for their timing.

Corpse tried to convince himself he wasn’t in some part happy for the distraction. He summoned his scythe and fitted mask and attuned his senses to their surroundings. Several shadows, but not too many. They got brave because he was distracted, or they were just stupid.

Sykkuno stepped closer and curled his fingers around Corpse’s sleeve. In the moment this gesture only amplified Corpse’s guilt. He glanced at him as briefly as he could manage, but this time it was Sykkuno who had his gaze turned downward and to the side. The combination of this position and his bangs falling forward made his expression completely unreadable.

Corpse stood to his full height and moved quickly, always making sure to keep Sykkuno behind him. He swung the scythe with deadly accuracy and made short work of the shadows, both the bold ones that attacked him outright and the sneaky ones that skulked around low to the ground and waited for any chance to snap forward and attack. 

Behind him, Sykkuno’s grip on his arm tightened ever so slightly, then let go to give him more freedom of range. Bolstered by this show of faith, Corpse made broader strokes and flashier kills. Maybe this was it. This was his role in Sykkuno’s life; the protector. He’d stupidly let himself get fooled into thinking they were friends but this was his atonement for that night. Or, he mentally corrected himself, _those nights_. Because what had really started this wasn’t the shadows attacking Sykkuno because he had a bit of the moon in him, it was the night Corpse had lost that bit of the moon in the first place.

That night the moonlight had reached for a lonely stargazer, entranced, captivated, drawn to him…

One simple mistake...

Eventually the few remaining shadows hissed and whispered threats, dissipating into the night around them and returning the street lamps and storefronts to their full vibrance. Corpse let his scythe disappear and took a moment to catch his breath. 

The full moon faded brightly into view above them. It illuminated them both, dazzling each other in the fleeting glance they exchanged before Sykkuno looked quickly upwards and Corpse turned away and put a hand to his mouth. No more distractions and they were right back where they were. Corpse prepared himself for the worst.

“Why would you ask that?”

Sykkuno’s voice was barely above a whisper. He looked to Corpse’s back, following the way the light jacket he was wearing fit his shoulders just right, to his pierced ear, and the outline of his face behind thick black curls before he balked and dropped his gaze down to the ground. “Corpse…”

“Remember what I told you that night?”

“A-About what?” In truth, no matter what Corpse was asking about, the answer was yes. Sykkuno still recalled everything about their conversation that night.

“Remember… I said… I said there might be another way to, to get my eye back from you…?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Well, I haven’t… I haven’t exactly been searching.”

“Oh.” If Sykkuno was honest, he hadn’t really been thinking about it either. “Well, that’s o--”

“No, it’s not okay.” Corpse interrupted him before he could even say it. His voice broke painfully, “I just said…” He gripped at his hair in frustration and forced himself to turn around. “Don’t say it’s okay, don’t, don’t you dare. Because it’s not. How can it be okay? I should… I should just leave. I can watch over you from the moonlight in case anything comes after you. It would… it would actually be easier that way. You don’t… deserve... Your life would be… would be so much better without me in it.”

Sykkuno felt like he’d been slapped. “No, it wouldn’t…”

“It would.” Corpse vehemently argued. He dug his nails into the palms of his hands. He’d come this far, it had to be said. “I… I fucked up. Everything that’s happened to you is my fault and… and… I think… I think deep down… I haven’t been looking for a way to get my eye back because…” deep breath, “because I’m scared to death that…” just let it out, “without it connecting us you wouldn’t want to be around me anymore.”

There. He’d said it. He felt like he was going to be sick.

Sykkuno’s instinct was to quickly say the first reassuring thing that came to mind, but he quelled it at the last minute. That wasn’t what would convince Corpse. Did Sykkuno regret that night? Of course not. Did he regret any of the scary nights that had come after? Honestly, he didn’t. But he had to tell him why. It had taken a lot of courage for Corpse to admit what had just said, and he deserved for Sykkuno to put as much thought into his answer.

So what was his answer?

“I don’t… think… there’s anything I can tell you…” he began slowly, carefully, “to make you believe that… that I don’t… regret that night. I know how those thoughts can be… can be kind of, how can I put it? They can get stuck in your head even… even though you know, deep down, that they… maybe, no, probably… aren’t right...” His shoulders rose and fell on a breath before going on, “But I can say this, in the time since that night lots of scary things have, have happened… but at the same time… I got to meet you, and... I’ve seen that you are kind, and caring, and, and a good friend…” Suddenly what Rae had been getting at made sense. But if he had been looking at Corpse in that way and so obviously, it was only because... “And… and let’s say, let’s say we do find a way to return your eye to you… without, without… you know… why can’t we still be fr…” he wet his lips and rethought his wording as he took a step closer, “t-together…?”

Corpse released the breath he’d been holding. Sykkuno was always liberal with over-the-top compliments, but there was something different to it this time. His voice was vulnerable and carefully worded. He wanted Corpse to know he was serious and it showed.

Sykkuno reached up and took Corpse's face in his hands. He pressed their foreheads together and they stood that way under the big, bright full moon for a long moment. Sykkuno's thumb brushed his cheek below the eyepatch and Corpse tilted his head into the touch.

Not too long ago this would have been enough. Now, he wasn’t so sure. If… If he could, if he dared to ask for more... Corpse pulled down his mask and closed the last breath of distance between them. His lips brushed Sykkuno's, softly, just barely, still testing the waters. Corpse lingered on the mere ghost of a kiss just long enough for his heart to burst at the little gasp Sykkuno made, then wrapped him tight in his arms and buried his face in his neck. Just like that first meeting, all he could think to say is, “Thank you.” Sykkuno made a small noise of affirmation in the back of his throat and squeezed him back.

He lifted his head to meet Sykkuno’s gaze, where the other man's flushed cheeks and glassy, searching eyes and the moon reflected in them took his breath away all over again. Corpse pulled at him, insistent, needy even. Their noses brushed against each other and Sykkuno let out another shaky utterance of his name. It sounded so good on his lips, he could listen to it a hundred thousand times over.

But all it took to really, truly undo him was one word:

"Stay."


	11. xi

A drop of the moon fell from the sky.

Stars fell all the time, but the moonlight remained cold and distant, keeping all others at arm’s length. The moon waxed and waned, pushed and pulled, keeping a careful balance. Always watching, often looked to, but never seen. It was the way it had always been. It was just the way the world was.

But the smallest things had the ability to lead to great changes.

A lonely stargazer on a clear night, absently singing a song about slowly falling and dreaming at one a.m. to himself. Above him, the moon was full and bright, the light cascading down to illuminate the night and a drop of it was just, so entranced...

That one moment of curiousity, of needing a closer look into those dark, expressive eyes had been all it took…

And so he fell.

“Sykkuno, do you mind locking up by yourself tonight? I’m meeting some friends for drinks and it would be nice to get there before happy hour ends.”

Sykkuno looked around. It had been a relatively slow evening, which was probably why Rae felt comfortable asking. “Sure,” he agreed, “that’s no problem at all.”

“Thanks, you’re the best. I’d ask if you wanted to join us but it’s a girls’ night.”

“That’s okay,” Sykkuno felt his cheeks begin to flush and ducked his head down. “Corpse is going to meet me here when I’m done.”

Rae stopped what she was doing to side-eye him. Oh jesus, she knew, didn’t she? Somehow she just _knew_. “Sykkuno…” his name came out slow and sly as she grinned around it, “just what was that look for?”

He made a one hundred and ten percent ineffective attempt to look innocent. “Wh-What look? I don’t... I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mm-hm, sure, you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Rae saw through him so clearly he might as well have been made of glass. “Okay, Sykkuno, spill.”

“S-Spill what? There’s-”

She pounced, caging him behind the espresso machine with a glint in her eye. “Spill it, Sykkuno. What happened? What’s going on? Tell me or I’ll get Toast to ask you. No, I’ll get _Sean_ to ask you.”

“Rae, you wouldn’t!”

“Try me!”

“Excuse me, can I get a refill?” A customer’s hesitant voice broke through their mini battle of wills and Sykkuno danced around Rae to take their mug.

Sykkuno refilled the customer’s coffee and Rae took their payment, and all the while Rae kept up a steady stream of, “there’s no escape, Sykkuno…”-type warnings. She was like a shark that had smelled blood on the water. Good thing he already mentioned having plans; at least that saved him from Rae dragging him to girls’ night.

“Rae, honestly, n-nothing… nothing happened…” Except he couldn’t lie, so his mouth ran of its own volition and added, “well, not _nothing_ maybe, but nothing like what you’re thinking!”

“And just what am I thinking, hmm?” she countered gleefully, taking the upperhand. “What am I thinking, Sykkuno?”

“U-Um…”

By some small miracle, he avoided having to tell her anything for the rest of their shift. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell her, Rae was one of his best friends so he would tell her eventually. Right now though, it was such a new development he still needed to sort his feelings out a bit and, honestly, he felt shy and… oddly protective of it. The memory of Corpse’s lips, his gentle touch and the look on his face when Sykkuno asked him to stay was like his own private treasure that he wanted to hold close and keep all to himself.

Rae left ahead of him as soon as the last few customers had gone, and Sykkuno made the rounds, cashing out the register, then cleaning the espresso machine for the night, washing the last few dishes, and mopping the floor. All that done, he hung up his apron and shut the lights off. Just as he was pushing through the front entrance, distracted by finding the right key, a tall man approached to stand directly and uncomfortably close in front of him.

“Sorry,” Sykkuno frowned at his keys and didn’t look up, “we’re closed.”

Without uttering a word the tall man roughly pushed him in the shoulder, sending him stumbling back into the store. Another shove and they were both inside, and with another Sykkuno’s hip collided painfully with a chair. He was so caught off guard that he couldn’t do anything but make incoherent and inarticulate noises of surprise.

His mysterious attacker closed the door, reaching up to still the bell before advancing on Sykkuno.

It was then Sykkuno finally got a halfway decent look at the other man. He was nearly a head taller than he was, dressed simply in a bright green zip-up hoodie with the hood pulled up over his head to frame…

a white smiley face mask?

“Wh--” Sykkuno barely got half the word out before the other man rushed at him. Tables were shoved aside and chairs tipped over in the ensuing scuffle, until they both toppled to the floor. Sykkuno went down hard, the back of his skull cracking against the floor and making bright spots of light dance across his vision. His attacker straddled him, one hand grabbing him roughly by the face so that his fingers dug into the back and underside of his jaw and his thumb put pressure on the corner of his left eye socket, stretching the skin uncomfortably until his eye watered.

“There it is…” the attacker said. “Sorry, whoever you are, but I need that bit of the moon.”

Sykkuno kicked and flailed. He managed to pull one hand free and tried to get purchase somewhere, anywhere on his attacker’s body to push him off. He grabbed at the hoodie, tried to force one knee away from where it had his torso in a tight grip, and in a moment of desperation shoved it upwards at the other man’s chin. This knocked the smiley face slightly askew, revealing a mouth underneath twisted in determination but not much else. Except, wait, Sykkuno froze for a half second, did he just see--?

The other man grunted and used Sykkuno’s distraction to catch him by the wrist. He shifted his body weight forward to pin it to the ground above Sykkuno’s head. This put their faces close enough together that Sykkuno could clearly hear his ragged breathing. It also put him at even more of a disadvantage, with the attacker’s full body weight put into keeping him pinned down. The pressure on his face increased...

Suddenly there was a dull _thwunk_ sound and Sykkuno’s attacker gave a strangled cry of pain, reflexively straightening up and letting go of Sykkuno’s face to grab at his lower back. The moment he did so, a curved jet-black blade slid under his chin to press against his throat.

“I’m gonna need you to very slowly and very carefully get up off him. Now.”

“Corpse!” Sykkuno said in relief. He waited until the attacker had stood up before taking a steadying breath and picking himself off the ground.

“Ha ha,” the attacker laughed, “so the rumours are all true.”

“Depends on what the rumours are saying,” Corpse said, his voice low and dangerous. He was still in scare-mode, the purple glow from his right eye standing out in the darkened cafe interior and curling upwards like smoke. The sight of it made Sykkuno’s suspicions about what he thought he’d just seen on his attacker seem more plausible.

“Hey, sorry, can we start over?” The attacker had both hands up and was standing as still as possible with the blade of Corpse’s scythe pressed against his throat, but he otherwise sounded far more relaxed than one would expect given the situation he was in. “I didn’t- okay, I’ll admit, I assumed the worst and thought maybe you stole that eye somehow. All those stories about the moon spirit protecting you? Nah nah nah, that couldn’t be true! And if you had stolen it, who’s to say I couldn’t just steal it from you, right?”

How would one even go about ‘stealing’ an eye?

Actually, no, his face still stung so Sykkuno didn’t want to know.

“But anyway,” the remarkably chill attacker went on, “if the moon spirit, who I’m assuming just kicked me in the back and is holding me at what looks to be scythe-point, is letting you keep their eye for whatever reason, that changes things. I didn’t believe that part and that’s my bad. Totally my mistake.” He flopped his hands backwards at the wrist and shrugged as far as was safe to do so. “So, y’know, let’s talk this out. See if we can’t come to an agreement or something.”

Sykkuno exchanged a suspicious look with Corpse over the chill attacker’s shoulder. “You said you ‘need’ it. What do you need it for?”

“Oh, well,” he drawled in response, “you can’t expect me to tell you everything, can you?”

Corpse adjusted the position of his scythe threateningly. “You wanna bet on that?”

“Nonononono wait wait wait!” He leaned his neck back and hurriedly pleaded his case. “Let’s talk this out. Let’s- Let’s be friends. Yeah? Hi, nice to meet you, my name’s Dream.” He extended a hand to Sykkuno, again keeping within what was a safe range to do so.

“Corpse…?” Sykkuno looked to Corpse again. Even in the dark and with his face mostly obscured anyway, Corpse still seemed mistrustful. Ultimately, it was still up to the more experienced person here who also just happened to be the one holding a weapon, but all the same, Sykkuno wanted to be sure of what he thought he’d seen and it seemed the most pacifist way to go about it. “Maybe we should hear him out?”

“Yeah yeah yeah, hear me out!”

“Sykkuno, he just attacked you,” Corpse reminded him.

Sykkuno put his hand to his chin and made a show of considering this. “That is true, he did just do that.”

“Yeah, I did, but…”

“All right, well, if you’re gonna kill him though, Corpse, at least do it outside, not in here.”

“Nonononono I get it, I get it, you guys hold all the cards. I’m sorry. I apologize. Please hear me out, please?”

He sounded sincere enough to Sykkuno at this point. Either that or he was a really good actor. The truth was also that, despite what he said about going outside, Sykkuno didn’t really want Corpse to kill him or anyone. He caught Corpse’s eye and shrugged, giving him the most ‘what else can we do?’ face he could.

Corpse didn’t look impressed, but pulled the scythe away from Dream’s neck anyway. He walked around to stand with Sykkuno and warned him, “Try anything and I’ll fucking ruin you.”

“I believe it.”

Sykkuno looked between them, then around at the mess his scuffle with Dream had made and began putting the tables and chairs back in place out of a need to occupy his hands while he thought. Also it had to be done or else people would think something was up when they came in for the morning shift. Who had morning shift tomorrow anyway? His mind was grasping for a familiar distraction already, and he noticed his hands were still shaking. No matter how many weird things happened to him, it was still hard to come down from the fear and adrenaline afterwards, especially after the incident at the abandoned laboratories. Although, if he _did_ get used to it that would probably be more worrisome...

His mind had wandered so far away he almost didn’t notice when Dream started helping him by standing the toppled-over chairs upright. Corpse had returned to his normal appearance with the eyepatch and surgical mask, but Dream still had the slightly askew smiley face mask on. Maybe he was like 5up? But 5up had at least lifted the visor to show part of his face...

Sykkuno bit his lip and took a risk on it being rude to ask, “Do you wear that mask all the time?”

Dream paused, then swallowed and stood straight. “Yeah.”

“Okay…” Sykkuno noted the change in his voice, and had just decided not to push it when Dream looked between him and Corpse and licked his lips nervously.

“Actually... yeah, that might, that might speed things along. Can… I mean, how much can I trust you guys?”

“You can’t.” Corpse answered darkly.

“You can trust me.” Sykkuno had to smile a little at Corpse’s answer, despite the overall situation they were in.

“Alright, well, no, I still think I’ll be able to trust you when you see…” Dream took hold of his mask with his thumb and forefinger, let out a breath, and lifted it up. “I mean, you of all people…”

Sykkuno had his suspicions, but what Dream revealed was far worse than he’d expected. He flitted a glance towards Corpse, who was also staring in wide-eyed surprise.

To get the mask completely off, Dream had used his other hand to push back his hood, revealing slightly wavy dark blond hair that curled over his forehead and fell into where his eyes would have _normally_ been...

Up until now, Sykkuno had seen Corpse mask-less and without the eyepatch exactly two times; the first night they met when Corpse showed him and after his birthday picnic when it had slipped out of place in his sleep. While Corpse had a glowing purple void where his missing right eye should have been matched to his human-looking left one, Dream had an unearthly green glow where _both_ eyes should have been. An angry red scar ran from just above his right ‘eye’ across his nose to traverse his left and continue over his cheekbone to end just short of his ear. He spread his arms in a kind of lackluster ‘ta-da’ gesture and replaced the mask, his mild, “well, now you know,” a stark contrast to how serious the problem looked.

“What… What happened?” Sykkuno struggled to ask.

Dream leaned against one of the chairs and sniffed, taking a moment to organize his thoughts. “There’s an imposter out there of me and he, well,” he made a slashing motion across his face with his thumb to illustrate, “he stole my actual eyes. I gotta kill him to get them back but, you know, he’s got so much of me now that… I thought if I had that bit of the moon I heard about it would give me an edge.” He laced his fingers together and looked to Sykkuno, “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. You seem like… you seem like a decent guy.”

Corpse had ‘I don’t forgive you’ written all over him, but Sykkuno considered what Dream had said carefully and erred on the side of cautious trust. “Okay, well… I, um…” he rubbed the back of his neck, feeling kind of awkward since this was the first time he’d ever had to say it out loud, “I didn’t really _take_ Corpse’s, uh… it really, it just kinda… f-fell into me and… and I kinda… accidentally used some of… um…” quick glance for nonverbal confirmation. Corpse didn’t look happy about it, but it didn’t seem like he would stop Sykkuno from telling the truth this time, “I kinda used some of the power in his- in that ‘bit of the moon’ and… and now I have to keep it until I die or we can find a non-dying way to give it back.”

Dream took a moment to process this. “So you really are just a regular person? A human?”

“Uh-huh. Just regular old... human Sykkuno.” He rocked on his heels patiently.

“And now that you’ve accidentally ended up with his eye you gotta deal with shadows and other evil spirits and idiots like me coming after you?”

“Pretty much.”

Dream looked to Corpse, then back to Sykkuno in disbelief. “Aren’t you like, mad at him?”

“Why would I be mad? It’s not like he lost his eye on purpose.”

“………You're so-” Dream briefly short-circuited at this response, “how are you so- I- wow- um… wow, okay…” He coughed into his hand to mentally reorient himself. “How about- What if- Say, here’s an idea. What if we work together?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I want to get my eyes back, you guys want to get his eye back in him, maybe we can help each other?”

“You can just kill the imposter to get your eyes back. No one’s killing Sykkuno.” Corpse had the tone of someone emphatically stating a fact.

“Right, no one’s killing Sykkuno. We agree on that.” Dream put up his hands, palms out. “I officially owe him my life, I think, so you have my word. I was just thinking since our problems are both eye-related, helping me might give you some ideas on how to help you. See what I mean?”

“That does kind of make sense,” Sykkuno agreed slowly.

Dream pushed off the chair he was leaning against. “Alright, so, you work here, I take it? Working tomorrow?”

Sykkuno took a moment to recall his schedule. “Yup, same shift so I’ll finish around this same time.”

“Okay, well, I’ll go track down my imposter, he’s not far, then meet you back here.” Dream back-stepped towards the door. “We can start over. No harm no foul, right?” He pushed open the door. “Bye Sykkuno, bye scary moon guy.” Dream disappeared into the night as quickly as he’d appeared.

Sykkuno couldn’t help it. He snickered. “Scary moon guy.”

“Don’t.” Corpse wasn’t amused. “Lock the door and let’s go.”

Once Sykkuno was satisfied the tables and chairs were back in order, he locked the door and Corpse walked him home. Together they took Bimbus for a walk, grabbing some Vietnamese take-out along the way, then returned to sit on cushions in Sykkuno’s bedroom and watch a movie while they ate.

Partway through the movie, Corpse reached over and gently took Sykkuno by the chin, tilting his head to the side to get a better look at the faint bruises forming where Dream had grabbed him.

“Is it bad?” Sykkuno grimaced. How was he going to make excuses to Rae and Toast this time?

“You’ve had worse,” Corpse quipped, masking the guilt he still wasn’t and probably never would be entirely over with humour. He brushed his thumb softly over each finger-shaped bruise, letting his hand slide back to cup the base of Sykkuno’s skull and draw him closer.

They took a moment to reorient themselves with Sykkuno’s head on his shoulder and Corpse’s arm slung over the mattress behind him. A few minutes further into the movie, Corpse murmured, “Can I make a confession?”

“Sure?”

“The way you low-key threatened Dream back at the shop... that was, that was kinda hot.”

Sykkuno angled his head back and playfully furrowed his brow at him. “Corpse, didn’t you already say you were… um, i- ‘into it’ about... me fighting Hafu with a piece of glass?”

A predatory grin spread across Corpse’s face at the memory. “Yeah, yeah, I did say that, didn’t I?”

“It almost…” Sykkuno’s voice was coy, even as his cheeks turned shades of pink, “I’m gonna start wondering if, if you wouldn’t prefer if I was someone different.”

Oh, was that the game he wanted to play? “No, no, you don’t get it. It’s _because_ you’re always so soft and nice that it gets me going.”

“Oh, I see...”

“Yeah.” Corpse played along, leaning into him until if they were any closer Sykkuno would be in his lap, or vice versa, he wasn’t picky. “Gets me wondering about other things.”

Sykkuno feigned innocence. “Like what?”

“Hmm…” Corpse’s voice rumbled, “where do I start…?” He nuzzled behind Sykkuno’s ear and the throaty little noise Sykkuno made in response went straight to his core. It also weirdly brought him back to reality again.

Corpse quelled the urge and contented himself to just hug Sykkuno close. What movie were they watching again? It didn’t matter. Corpse set his chin on Sykkuno’s shoulder and huffed. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed in his own restraint or proud of it. He just… Dream coming right out and asking if Sykkuno wasn’t angry had stung because he really should be, and Sykkuno brushing it off so easily had only made Corpse feel more guilty about the situation. He just… still needed time…

Sykkuno didn’t know how to feel about it all either. Even before the other night, this wasn’t the first time they’d skated very, very close to the edge of _something_ and then skittishly backed away from it. He almost wondered if the kiss and asking Corpse to stay hadn’t just complicated things somehow.

“If Dream shows up tomorrow before I get there, don’t go anywhere alone with him, okay?”

Sykkuno brought his hand up to place it over one of Corpse’s. “I won’t,” he promised.

But Dream did not show up at the cafe the next day, nor the next… nor the next. It would be almost two weeks, on the night of a new moon, before they met him again.


	12. xii

On a dry and hot late summer evening, Sykkuno, Rae, and Toast got together at a local pub for chicken wings and to just hang out without needing to worry about work. It had been Rae’s day off and she was showing them pictures from spending the day at the beach with her friends.

“We should get Sean to cover a shift for one of us so we can all three go sometime before the water gets too cold.”

“Yeah,” Toast agreed, “that sounds like fun.”

“Sykkuno needs to remember what the world outside the city looks like in the daytime anyway.”

“What?”

“When was the last time you went anywhere and it wasn’t for stargazing in the middle of the night?” Rae didn’t even let him finish thinking of an answer. “Exactly, you can’t even remember.”

“Okay, okay…” Sykkuno could admit she had a point. He went back to scrolling through her pictures, stopping on one that included someone he didn’t expect. “Is this Brooke?”

Rae glanced over. “Oh yeah, she came along too.” 

Rae and Brooke were go-to-the-beach friends now? Actually, no, Sykkuno wasn’t even surprised. Rae made friends with everyone.

Rae set her drink down with a clunk as something occurred to her. “Did you know Brooke and Corpse are siblings?”

“Uh…” Sykkuno laughed a little. He guessed it must have come up and Brooke went with the same evasive answer she’d once given Sykkuno to tease him. “Yeah, they did say, um, something about that once.”

The server came over to check on them, so they ordered another round of chicken wings and drinks. Conversation went back to the topic of going somewhere together, and the night ended with tentative plans to make a beach trip if they could find the time in the next week or so. Sykkuno was within walking distance, but he waited with Rae and Toast for their uber to keep them company.

“Corpse not coming to walk you home tonight?” Rae asked.

Sykkuno glanced up at the sky. Corpse usually hung around when it was a new moon for… moon spirit reasons Sykkuno didn’t fully understand. Hm. He checked the time on his phone. “We didn’t make any plans, but… he could be at Tina’s so I might swing by on the way home, see if he’s still there.”

“He really is king of the cats, isn’t he?”

Toast nudged Sykkuno and nodded at something across the street. “Check it out guys, looks like Halloween came early for someone.”

Rae and Sykkuno followed his gaze, and Sykkuno barely heard Rae’s comment about how it wasn’t a very involved costume, because he recognized the green hoodie and smiley face mask...

Dream.

Sykkuno tried his best to act normal the rest of the wait for Rae and Toast’s ride. Once he’d seen them off, he cautiously crossed the street.

“Sup,” Dream greeted him.

“Where have you been? You said you’d come back the next day. Is everything all right?”

“Oh, everything’s fine,” Dream answered easily.

“Did you find your imposter?”

“Yeah, I did.”

Sykkuno waited for him to go on. He didn’t, so, “And...?”

“And…” Dream drawled but didn’t elaborate. “Hey, let’s go this way. We can talk over here.”

Sykkuno started to follow but stopped. This was decidedly not the way to Tina’s cat cafe. “Wait, where...?”

“This way. Come on.”

Sykkuno followed, slowly, trying to think of a way to stall. Dream was leading the way further away from where there were other people around and it seemed like a bad idea. Dream might be able to see clearly in the dark but Sykkuno… wait. “Hey, um, this is kind of an awkward question but… how can see without your eyes?”

Dream stopped walking. He tapped one finger to his temple and answered, “You didn’t know? It’s the mask. But…” He turned around and walked up close to stand directly in front of Sykkuno, bent over at the waist so they were face to face. He hooked his thumb under his mask and pulled it up…

to reveal red-rimmed bright hazel eyes.

Sykkuno sucked in a breath.

“...even without it I see you pretty well,” Imposter Dream said with a smug grin.

Tina walked Corpse to the door along with the other couple of customers who had stayed at the cat cafe until closing. “No Sykkuno tonight?”

“Nah, he’s out with Rae and Toast…” Corpse looked down the street. “I guess I could swing that way and see if they’re still there.”

Tina looked confused. “Why not just text him?”

“I don’t… have a phone…” Corpse said slowly. It was hard to have a phone without a proper address. But now that Tina mentioned it, it did seem like a convenient thing to have…

Despite how unusual it was, Tina rolled with it and pulled her own phone out of her apron pocket. “I’ll text him for you.”

“Oh, can you?”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re buds.”

Backed against a wall by Imposter Dream, Sykkuno felt his phone buzz in his pocket. “Um…”

Imposter Dream was making full use of his height advantage to intimidate him. “If only I’d realized… I could sense _something_ powerful… powerful enough to make me risk being found… but a bit of the moon?” His hand fit neatly over where the bruises left by the real Dream had only just faded. “I’ll be unstoppable.”

Sykkuno grit his teeth and angled his head back to try to get out from under Imposter Dream’s touch. At the same time, he surreptitiously slipped his phone from his pocket. “Wh-Where is Dream?”

“I haven’t killed him yet, if that’s what you’re asking. No fun in that...”

It… was and it wasn’t what he was asking but good to know?

“As for you…” he pressed his fingers harder into Sykkuno’s skin, “I’m not letting you get away again…”

Again? What did he mean again?

Sykkuno ducked his head down, pulling it out of Imposter Dream’s grip momentarily and managing to get a quick look at his phone screen. He had a text from Tina.

_Corpse wants to know where you’re at._

Corpse was still at Tina’s!

Tina’s phone blipped and she checked it. “Is Sykkuno drunk?”

Corpse had seen Sykkuno drunk but couldn’t imagine how that presented itself in text. “What do you mean?”

Tina showed him the reply from Sykkuno: _w/ :) @ vega frm pub_

Corpse puzzled over the message along with Tina.

“With… smiley face… at vega from pub?” Tina sounded the message out slowly.

Smiley face… So Dream came back?

“Well…” Tina was still trying to work it out, “do you know what pub they went to?”

“Yeah, yeah, the one with all the different types of, uh, chicken wings.”

“Oh yeah, I like that place. What’s ‘vega’ supposed to mean?”

Corpse’s gaze suddenly snapped upwards. Tonight was the new moon, which meant that even here in the city there was a better chance of seeing some of the brighter stars in the sky. Leave it to someone who spent half their time stargazing to come up with such a needlessly cryptic hint. “Got it, thanks Tina.” Corpse took off down the street towards the pub at a jog.

“As long as you got it, I guess…” Tina waved him off.

Corpse ran as far as the pub and stopped short. He turned wildly around with his eyes skyward until he found the star Vega to the east and followed it down a street lined with little shops and bistros that were all mostly closed already. Sure enough, he’d understood Sykkuno’s message right as he rounded a bend and came across him with Dream.

He told him. He told him not to go anywhere alone with him. Why did he have to be so damn trusting?! 

Corpse withdrew his scythe and his battle-mask and swung without bothering even to announce his presence. It seemed he had already been noticed, however, when Dream raised an arm and blocked the blow almost effortlessly. He lifted his head, and Corpse saw the mask was pushed up and to the side on his head a split second before the bright eyes became visible.

So this was Imposter Dream.

All the more reason to not go off into the night alone with him! And on the night of a new moon when shadows were at their strongest, too!

Imposter Dream moved quickly, pushing back in an attempt to throw Corpse off balance. With possession of the real Dream’s eyes, he certainly was more powerful than the average imposter. He swiftly ducked under the blade and took two running steps to bodily close the distance between them. Imposter Dream danced around Corpse’s efforts to fight back, getting him with a knee to the ribs that made him double over. He followed it quick with an elbow between the shoulder blades paired immediately with swinging this other arm around to punch Corpse in the back of the head and send him crashing down to the ground. The scythe slipped from his hand and bounced, the blade swinging wildly through the air, to clatter at Sykkuno’s feet.

By this point in the current strange chapter of Sykkuno’s life, he didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed the scythe and just like before nearly fell over before gaining his balance with it. The blade scraped along the ground as he threw himself at Imposter Dream and swung blindly. Maybe Corpse really should have given him lessons.

Imposter Dream laughed with glee and moved out of the way.

Sykkuno struggled to stay on his feet as the scythe whistled through the air. He snapped one hand forward on the staff and struggled to steady his breathing. Sliding one foot along the ground, he swung back, doing his best to keep the blade level and mimic what he’d seen Corpse do. The more he got the hang of it, the more the night seemed to be just a little bit brighter, his surroundings a little more defined. It became easier to track movement, and he came close, but Imposter Dream was also toying with him. He jumped up and put one foot on the blade, pinning it to the ground and stepping onto the staff with the other to tower over Sykkuno.

“Not bad. I like this game.” His lips twisted into something halfway between a sneer and a toothy smile. “Tell you what, it’ll be even more fun with my buddy around to see it when I take that bit of the moon from you, so I’ll give you a sporting chance. A smart guy like you shouldn’t have any trouble finding me again.”

Again. Again… What did he mean by ‘again’? Sykkuno wracked his brain.

“Bye.” Imposter Dream bent his knees and pushed off the scythe to leap cleanly over Sykkuno’s head and take off down the street. Soon he had melted away into the surrounding darkness.

As Sykkuno watched him go, something about the way the bright green both stood out and blended into the dark pinged something in the back of his brain. “I think… I think I know where Dream is.” ‘Again’, of course. It made sense now.

Corpse walked over to take his scythe back, a scowl on his face and one hand gingerly feeling the back of his head. “I told you not to go anywhere alone. What if I hadn’t stuck around tonight?”

Sykkuno was still looking down the street where Imposter Dream had disappeared. “Sorry, I was…” Sykkuno turned back to explain, and as their eyes met, something in Corpse’s face changed that he couldn’t read. Sykkuno stopped, confused, and changed track to ask, “What is it?”

“Nothing…” Corpse lied. He brushed the backs of his fingers against Sykkuno’s left cheek. Already his eye was fading back to its normal colour, but Corpse hadn’t missed the bright moonlight that had been brimming over in it. “Just… glad you’re okay. You were saying? Where do you think Dream is?”

The abandoned laboratory facility was even more imposing in the dark than it had been at sunset the last time Sykkuno was here. Sure it had been dark when they left, but he was so delirious from bloodloss and exhaustion at the time he didn’t actually remember that very well. Standing now at the gate, he paused, absently rubbing his thumb over the scar on his palm.

Corpse reached over and took his hand in his own, covering the scar protectively. “Hey,” he said softly, “I can go alone if you want?”

Sykkuno shook his head. “I need to actually be with you to remember the way.”

For not the first time, Sykkuno’s quiet and unassuming courage filled Corpse with both pride and inspiration as well as the need to protect him at all costs. “Okay, lead the way.”

They crossed the cracked parking lot and stepped into the pitch-black entranceway. Sykkuno had thought ahead and borrowed some other useful things they might need from the coffee shop’s emergency kit. He used the flashlight now to illuminate the multiple passages leading off it in turn. He couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but as he recalled 5up went that way then that way, Hafu went that way to the electrical mainframe, and he had taken the one on the perimeter to the left first, then… “This way.”

They reached the T-junction at the end of the corridor and Sykkuno began to feel more sure of it. The memory of standing here, coming up with that insane plan, and seeing something… something he now recognized as some _one_ in a green hoodie down to the… right. Sure enough, the right corridor was the one that connected to the other large building at the back, the one that Hafu and 5up didn’t inspect.

Was that Sykkuno’s fault? If he hadn’t hurt himself and needed to go to the hospital would they have found the true ‘nest’ and dealt with Imposter Dream earlier? But then they wouldn’t have known about Dream’s eyes being stolen. He had seemed so desperate to get them back. Was that how Corpse really felt, Sykkuno wondered. Was Corpse equally desperate to be whole again? Was taking their time finding a solution… just hurting Corpse in the long run? Sykkuno squeezed Corpse’s hand reflexively and Corpse squeezed back. The door to the second building was ajar, and together they stepped through it.

“Oh, hey guys, glad you could join us.”

It was impossible in the dark to tell which Dream greeted them, but there was a quality to his voice made Sykkuno suspect it was probably the imposter. That of course begged the question, was the real one there?

“Dream?”

Only the smug laugh of Imposter Dream rang out. “Aw, look at the poor thing. What is even the point of having the moon spirit’s eye if you still can’t see in the dark?”

“Wh-Why not turn on a light and disappear yourself, then?” Sykkuno challenged. Oh wait, imposters could still hang around in the light, couldn’t they? It sounded cooler in his head, anyway. He’d come a long way from blind panic, at least. And to be honest, he still somehow felt like he could see more than he normally would. He rubbed absently at his left eye.

Corpse lifted their hands and pressed his mouth to the scar on his palm softly before letting go. Just as they planned, he slipped away to search the right side of the room while Sykkuno went left.

Sykkuno may have been able to see more than normal and the flashlight helped, but he was still at a severe disadvantage. He still needed more light. He held the flashlight under his arm and reached into his back pocket. Pulling out the emergency flare from the shop’s kit, he uncapped it and struck the end against the rough matchbox-like patch at the end of the cap to light it. He tossed the lit flare onto the floor a short distance in front of him and cautiously looked around where it illuminated. The writing on the flare said it would last anywhere between ten to thirty minutes, which gave him a rather iffy time frame to work with. Best to move quickly as possible. 

Sykkuno’s heart was beating in his ears, and the harsh white-orange light from the flare was messing with his vision a bit, so it took him a moment to realize…

“I bet you’re wondering why there’s no other shadows here.”

Imposter Dream’s voice sounded directly above his head, and Sykkuno snapped his gaze upwards. He could see _a_ Dream sitting up there, but everything from his shoulders up was blocked by the shadow thrown where the light of the flare hit the catwalk he was sitting on. So which Dream was it? The imposter talking to him or the real Dream, unable to speak for some reason? No choice but to keep him talking and wait for some kind of hint. “Yeah, I was just wondering that.”

With almost lazy ease, Imposter Dream informed him, “Those crazy strong guys you came with before killed them all. Oh, and the moon spirit helped too, I guess.”

“What?”

“Look, man, now that I have these eyes, none of those other guys are on my level. They were just pawns in my buddy’s and my little game. I knew if I got a bunch in here and they made enough noise it would attract attention, then he’d come sniffing around to see if I had a hand in it. Easy win.”

Wait, so if Sykkuno understood right, “You sacrificed all those shadow creatures just… just to mess with Dream?”

“Yeah, so what? Plenty more where they came from.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Ha ha! Maybe!”

“So what’s the plan now?”

“Why not come up here and find out?”

That didn’t seem like a trap at all. “Wh-Why not come down and tell me?”

“Where’s the fun in that? Come on up here. Gamble a little; is the Dream you see above you friend or foe? What do you say?”

To be fair, there was no guarantee the non-imposter Dream was his friend either. But in any case, Sykkuno gambled not on Imposter Dream’s proposal, but on the belief that their voices carried and that Corpse had caught on to what was happening. Sykkuno trusted that he would have his back. He put one hand on the rail, mentally steeled himself for whatever awaited him, and began to climb the stairs away from the safety of his light flare bubble.

At the top of the stairs, the light from the flare came through the grated floor of the catwalk in weird broken beams of light that wavered slightly and got into his eyes as he slowly approached whichever Dream was sitting ahead of him. As he got closer it became apparent that this Dream was blindfolded and gagged, so… the real one?

Sykkuno closed the distance between them and crouched down. “Dream…?”

“Why did you come here?” Dream asked as the gag fell away easily.

The flare below them flickered. Was it going out already or had something or someone crossed in front of it?

Why did Sykkuno come here? Actually, that was easy.

“Because I said I’d help you.”

A sinister chuckle came from the other man’s mouth. “You’re an idiot.”

That was when he knew he’d lost the bet and walked right into Imposter Dream’s trap. He paused when the realization hit him, hands just short of untying the blindfold. Imposter Dream moved so fast that it slipped from his eyes of its own accord anyway, having never been properly tied in the first place. He grabbed Sykkuno by the face and shoved, throwing Sykkuno off his feet to land with his back against the opposite railing.

Imposter Dream mounted him, bodily pinning him to the railing and putting both hands on his face. “I’ll be taking that bit of the moon now…”

Wait.

By now he’d heard the phrase so often, Sykkuno was hit with sudden clarity. Both Imposter Dream and real-Dream and even Imposter Hafu had said something akin to ‘taking’ the bit of the moon from him. Corpse had said he’d used the power in his eye ‘as his own’, but it was still a bit of the _moon_. So, in a way, it was _theirs_ now; it was both a bit of the moon and a bit of Sykkuno now… Right? A bit of the moon… a drop of the moon had fallen from the sky and found him…

The blood was rushing in Sykkuno’s ears and whatever Imposter Dream was doing to him it was jumbling his thoughts. He grit his teeth in blind desperation. He had to think, had to focus… There had to be a way...

Corpse had called it fucking up, like it was an accident. Probably it was just that, an accident. Sykkuno could tell he still regretted it. But Sykkuno didn’t regret it, he accepted it; if it had brought them together, then he welcomed it. And he could _use_ it. Maybe… maybe that was the solution…

If it was so easy… If it was so easy to lose and to take and to use as one’s own… and if others had the power to take it from him, shouldn’t he logically have the ability now to do the same?

Was that the solution all along?

Sykkuno stopped struggling and put out his hands, covering Imposter Dream’s eyes in the same moment he squeezed his own shut and concentrated. The weightless disconnected feeling came easier to him this time somehow, maybe because he had a better idea of what he was doing. He could sense a glimmer of light in the darkness. It shimmered like the surface of a lake at midnight with only the night sky reflected upon it. Delicately, gently, Sykkuno scooped it into his hands.

Imposter Dream shoved at him with a malicious and inhuman shout of, “No!”

The metal railing rattled with the impact, and Sykkuno’s eyes flew open with a painfully sharp gasp of breath on reflex. In that brief moment he could see two figures approaching from the dark. Oh good, he found him…

Imposter Dream shoved him again, grabbing hold of his shoulder to violently slam his body against the hard metal. Sykkuno almost lost hold of the light, but somehow managed to keep it with him. There was a slight pull and then it came free. He hugged it close to his chest and curled in on himself protectively.

With a wretched cry, Imposter Dream faded into inky black smoke that hovered in the air like an echo for a moment, then plummeted to the ground like a burst water balloon. 

Sykkuno slowly allowed himself to breathe again. He relaxed and opened his eyes to see his hands cupped around an hazy green glow that felt warm and comforting. “Dream…” he said, barely daring to breathe with something so delicate and important in his possession, “Dream, come… come here…”

“Sykkuno…” Dream fell to his knees next to him. “Sykkuno, you did it…!”

Dream reached out and took the glowing, weightless pool of starlight from Sykkuno’s hands. The emergency flare below them was dying, and Sykkuno was exhausted, so it was hard to see clearly, but it really did seem to be a bizarrely easy process. When Dream pulled his hands away from his face, while the scar remained, the bright hazel eyes were where they should be.

Dream laughed, the sound of it short and vibrant and full of joy. “What the hell! I really owe you guys!”

Sykkuno looked past him at Corpse, or rather, the vague purple glow that signified Corpse was there in the dark. Corpse, who surely must want his eye back just as much as Dream had... Sykkuno wondered… He put his fingers to his left eye and his mind went back to sorting the jumble of thoughts he’d had when fighting against Imposter Dream. If the power within it was partially his now… if using it had been so easy, if returning Dream’s eyes had been so easy… who’s to say he couldn’t just… give it back…?

…

..

.

The world disappeared.

He was floating.

Weightless in space.

Sykkuno dreamily opened his eyes to what appeared to be a clear night sky, with the Milky Way cascading in a shimmering arc over him. He lifted a hand and reached up towards it. They all seemed so much closer now. He could almost... he could almost see as far as the moonlight reached… It was so quiet and beautiful he wished he could stay here forever, surrounded by the light of the stars, and the brilliant, bright moon...

His fingers brushed against something, another hand, one that was broad and strong and cool to the touch, adorned with chunky silver rings and chipped black polish as if in an attempt to hide how gentle the owner was on the inside.

“Sykkuno, no,” a voice said softly as their fingers laced together. “You can’t…”

When Sykkuno next awoke, he was bundled up in his own bed with his dog curled up next to him. He passed his hand hazily over his eyes and…

His eyes!

Sykkuno sat up so quickly Bimbus rolled over and looked at him in reproach.

There was movement in the next room and Rae came running from the dining area. “Sykkuno!!”

“Rae…” he croaked, surprised and happy to see her.

“Omigod, Toast, Corpse, someone, someone get him a glass of water.” Rae sat on the bed and felt his forehead. “How do you feel? You’ve been laid up with a fever for three days now.”

His head felt full of cotton. “Rae, Rae… my eyes…” He rubbed at them with the heels of his hands. Both felt like they were there but were they…?

Rae looked closely at him. “What about your eyes? They look fine to me, here.” For lack of a mirror she opened the camera app on her phone and handed it to him.

Sykkuno blinked blearily at his image on the screen. Two dark brown eyes looked back, same as they’d always appeared to him except… the more he stared, the more the brown seemed to have undertones of a different colour…

Toast and Corpse came in from the kitchen. Toast brought a glass of water over while Corpse hung back in the doorway. Once Sykkuno saw that Corpse still had the eyepatch and surgical mask on, he knew for certain that his attempt had failed and the bit of the moon was still within him.

Sykkuno accepted the glass of water from Toast and tried to process how he felt about that.

Rae took her phone back and smoothed his hair for him. “That better?”

“Yeah…” he looked around at them, “Wh-What are you all doing here?”

“We’ve been taking turns staying with you.” Rae sat back and rolled her eyes. “Corpse had it in his head to do it all himself and let me tell you, it was a battle to get him to see reason.”

“Rae literally kicked him out the door and made him go home,” Toast added with a chuckle.

“O-Oh, um…” Sykkuno put his hand to his mouth as the mental image brought a smile to his face. “Okay…”

“Well, your temperature feels back to normal. Do you think you could eat something?” Rae asked.

At the mention of food, he was suddenly really, really hungry. “Yeah, I... think I could eat something.”

Toast shot Corpse a quick glance and suggested, “Hey, Rae, why don’t you and I go get some takeout while Sykkuno takes a shower? He’s been in bed for days, he kind of stinks.”

Sykkuno would be insulted if he wasn’t probably correct about that.

“We could do that…” Rae fretted a little.

“Corpse can stay behind if Sykkuno needs help with anything,” Toast added mildly. He gave Rae a look.

_Oh!_ “Yeah, okay...” Rae stood up from the bed. “We leave him in your capable hands, Corpse.”

“Any food requests, Sykkuno?” Toast asked.

“No, no… um… anything’s fine. Thanks guys…”

Sykkuno watched from the bed as Toast and Rae put their shoes on and made the last minute decision to take Bimbus for a walk on the way to get food. The silence after they left was immediately heavy in the air.

“Dream…?” he asked.

“Is fine.” Corpse answered, voice low and dull. “I found him trapped on the other side of the room but still within sight of where you found his imposter. He said he’d be around when you were better to thank you.”

“O-Okay.” More heavy silence. Sykkuno pressed his lips together. He knew what was causing it. “Do, Do you--”

“Yes,” Corpse answered, so quickly Sykkuno was taken aback momentarily.

_Do you still think I regret meeting you?_

“Corpse…”

“Sykkuno, you just, you just nearly killed yourself trying to fix my mistake.”

Sykkuno remained silent for a long time. In hindsight, knowing how Corpse felt, he could see how he would have assumed the worst. It hurt to think how he’d been beating himself up over it these past few days. “I just… thought...” he tried to explain, his voice small and shaky. He stared at his hands, feeling the tears well up. “I thought… I thought it was worth a try, b-because... I thought that… i-it was what you wanted…”

Corpse kept his distance as long as he could. It took Sykkuno pulling at the duvet for him to stride across the room and make sure he stayed put. “I do… I do but I don’t…” He dropped down on the mattress and pulled Sykkuno into his arms, laying his head on his shoulder to avoid looking him in the eyes. “Not if it means…” his voice broke and he fell silent.

Sykkuno knew the rest anyway. “I wasn’t… I just thought maybe I could do it without… that… happening. That’s all.”

“Is… Is it worth the risk… to you? It’s not worth it to me.”

Sykkuno exhaled slowly. He could feel Corpse trembling and held him tight. “I just want... you to be happy, that’s all. I saw how happy getting his eyes back made Dream, and…” He eased back and ducked his head so Corpse would have to look at him. “I’m sorry. When I said ‘stay’, Corpse… I meant it. No matter what happens, no matter… no matter if we do or we don’t find a way to make you whole again or if someday… if someday I... if I need to become moonlight myself… I want you to stay, not because you feel you have to protect me, but because… I...” he took a deep, shaky breath and the rest of the words tumbled out in earnest, “even after this short time together, I can’t imagine life without you in it.”

Corpse went very, very still for a moment, then sat back to take both Sykkuno’s hands in his as he gave a short, breathy laugh. “You’re too good for me.”

Sykkuno blushed. “I-I hope… I hope someday you’ll think I’m just good enough.”

Corpse laughed again, this time with more humour, enough that his visible eye crinkled in amusement. The sight of it made Sykkuno feel a million times better. He reached over and stroked Sykkuno’s face. “I’m sorry, too. I was just… so scared. I got all in my head.” Part of what Sykkuno had said came back to him and his voice softened, “I can’t imagine life without you, either.” It felt just as good to say as it was to hear it. “Now come on, let’s get you in the shower.”

As Corpse shifted the duvet and put his arm around him, Sykkuno blushed harder. “L-Let’s…?”

Corpse froze. “That’s not- I didn’t- uh, not… not when- Rae and Toast could come back at any moment… uh...”

“Oh, right...” Duh. Of course. Wait, did that mean... if they weren’t coming back at any moment, then...? Sykkuno quickly shoved that thought aside. His face was red enough as it was.

Corpse helped him get up and steady on his feet, hoping all the while that Sykkuno wouldn’t notice he was blushing behind his mask. “Y-You go shower and… and…” a thought occurred to him, and with a slow smile he offered, “and I’ll make you a nice cup of herbal tea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading if you made it this far! It's been quite a long time since I wrote something just for fun, and everyone's lovely comments have been very touching.  
> This isn't the end, there will be more but 12 (as in 12 months to go with the moon theme, idk it made sense in my head) seemed like a good place to wrap up part of the story and give me time to plan further chapters. Think of this as being like season 1 of the hypothetical anime. :D I hope you'll look forward to season 2. Thanks again!


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